Technology: The various Mexican Indian political groups were just starting to grope their way out of the Stone Age.  They knew how to cast copper and gold, and a few groups like the Tarascans and Haustecsknew how to make bronze. This was all a fairly recent thing though, and metal was still used primarily for ornaments rather than tools, though the Huastecs may have had bronze axes. Most tools were still made of stone.

Most of the political groups in this area had some form of writing. The Mayas and Aztecs certainly did. I haven't seen any indication that the Tarascans and other people of western Mexico or the Haustecs of northeastern Mexico made much use of writing, but that may be because of the nature of the conquest and early Spanish rule in those areas, both of which were more brutal and destructive than in Central Mexico.

Throughout the area, people practiced a very intensive agriculture based on corn, beans and some lesser known crops. Dense human populations kept wild animal numbers down, which made animal protein scarce and precious. Domestic turkeys and dogs bred as food animals filled some of the gap. In some cases, Indians herded deer into large enclosures and used them as food animals, though the deer were not actually domesticated in the same sense that cattle are.

There were no domestic animals large enough to carry substantial burdens, so goods were transported overland by human porters. Along the coast and on the regions large lakes, Indians in this area traded and transported goods via large canoes. Coastal groups may or may not have used sails before 1492. They certainly did shortly after contact.

Military Power: Militarily the Indians in this area were still very much in the stone age. Hand-to-hand combat was based on spears and in some areas on formidably sharp obsidian-edged swords. Longer range fighting was done mainly by bows or by javelins thrown from spear throwers, with stones thrown by slings playing a minor role.

Military systems were shaped around the constraints of transportation. With no horses or other animals to carry food for armies, campaigns had to be carefully planned so that the armies didn't starve in route. The Aztecs had a very elaborate system where tributaries were required to furnish food for the Aztec armies on short notice if ordered to. That allowed them to move larger armies for greater distances than other groups in this region. It also made their power vulnerable because if they appeared weak tributaries refused to supply that food, which robbed them of much of their ability to project power.

The Aztecs did have a second way of projecting power though. They had a fleet of thousands of large war canoes that allowed them to move men and supplies rapidly around the large lakes that then dominated the core of civilized Mexico.

Politics: The Aztecs were the predominant power in this region. When most people think of Mexico before Columbus, they think of Aztecs if they think of anybody, and rightly so. However the Aztecs were by no means the only major player in Pre-Columbian Mexico, and they weren't even the only major player in their empire.

The Aztecs themselves were a tiny minority in the high culture areas of Mexico, and even within the area that they controlled. They were a city-state that extorted tribute from a large area around them, but generally did not rule it in the European sense. There were at best two or three hundred thousand of them in an area with at least seven million and possibly as many as twenty-five million people. The Aztecs were recent arrivals in Central Mexico, immigrants from the northern frontier. They made their living as mercenary warriors in their early years in Central Mexico, then gradually became more powerful by maneuvering shrewdly between the more established powers of Central Mexico. They rose to the top of the central Mexican power structure by forming an alliance with two other city-states and toppling the formerly dominant city-state a little over a hundred years before Columbus.

A couple of other representative groups inside the Aztec-controlled part of Central Mexico:

Texcoco: One of the partners in the Aztec triple alliance. Texcoco had it's own fairly extensive empire, but by the time the Spanish arrived they were becoming subservient to the Aztecs, with the Aztecs interfering with their political succession and generally treating them as a junior partner.

Totonacs: A group on the central part of the east coast of Mexico. They were a recent conquest of the Aztecs, being conquered not long before 1492. They were the first major group inside the Aztec empire to be contacted by the Spanish and quickly allied themselves with Spain against the Aztecs.

That's only a small sample of the mosaic of political and ethnic groups inside or partly inside the Aztec empire. Some other groups, like the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, had their own very distinctive cultures and traditions. There were also fully or mostly independent groups like the Tlaxcallans, the Tarascans, the Huastecs, and many others. The political and ethnic situation of the Aztec empire was probably as complex as that of the Holy Roman Empire or of the Italian city/states of the time, if not more so.

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