the Aztecs were sacrificing people to Huitzilopochtli (their war god), when europeans were teaching and learning in Oxford an Cambridge.
Same with the mayans. We can discuss all day long, but their civilizations were not any more advanced than old egypt ones, and the ones in the Levantine era (Prior to the Roman period). Which were about 2080-3500 years prior.
Oxford is a strange callout. It was founded in 1096. About 700 years before the enlightenment. I doubt they were teaching heliocentrism and the scientific method.
According to Aztec records, for the consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, 84 000 people were sacrificed IN FOUR DAYS.
You can't even begin to compare the numbers. Many historians agree that the reason a small number of Spanish soldiers could conquer the big Aztec empire is because they could forge alliances with the neighbouring tribes that were completely fed up with them. The Aztec were the Nazis of their time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_cultu...
You can find plenty of sources there.
My point was to show that the claim, "they had a civilization but they were way behind those both of europe and asia", because "europeans were teaching and learning in Oxford and Cambridge." is a nonsense argument.
With regard to belief in mysticism and exercising religious violence they don't seem dissimilar.
Maybe they seem more different because sacrificing 84k people at a pyramid is less familiar to us than Catholics and Protestants butchering each other in the streets and defenestrating each other.