Final answer:
The Aztecs believed that without regular blood sacrifices to their gods, particularly the sun god, the world would fall into chaos, natural cycles would fail, diseases would proliferate, and their society would lose its power.
Step-by-step explanation:
If the Aztec people did not make sacrifices similar to the blood sacrifice their sun god had given, they believed that catastrophic events would occur. According to Aztec cosmology, such sacrifices were essential to maintain the balance of the natural world and keep the gods appeased. Without blood sacrifice, the Aztecs feared that the sun would fail to move across the sky, harvests would fail, diseases would spread, and their society would lose its military strength and dominance.
Ritual human sacrifice was a common practice among the Aztecs, who were deeply engaged in their religion and mythology. The act of sacrifice was believed to be a repayment of the debt humans owed to the gods, who had used their own blood to create the world and all its elements. The Aztecs performed these rituals frequently to sustain their gods and, by extension, the order of the world as they understood it.
Priests would perform these sacrificial rituals to a variety of deities, but one of the primary gods was Huitzilopochtli, the sun and war god. Sacrificial ceremonies often involved heart extraction with an obsidian knife and were conducted on significant calendar days or during certain religious events.