| Life in Tenochtitlan would have differed from rural villages in two major ways. First, the greater population concentration would have increased the possibility of daily encounters with people with whom you had no existing social ties. Perhaps this would have placed in sharper relief the distinction between family and strangers; equally, it could have led to extensions of family behavior outward to create bonds to strangers. Second, and the subject of most discussions of Aztec society, life in the city involved all its residents in the political, economic and religious authority of the central government. Participation in temple-centered religion was distinctive of life in each neighborhood, quarter, and the city as a whole.
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