Two young boys wake up one summer morning with thoughts of fun and sun in their minds. They are excited about the prospects of what another summer vacation day can offer. But as most summer vacations go three or four hours into the day they walk sulking, with their heads bowed, into the house to inform their mother of the earth shattering news. "We"re bored!" Their mother, as every mother does, immediately throws out some great ideas, one of them sending thrills to the cores of each of the boys. Go to the pool. As the initial excitement passes the boys realize they have spent all of their summer allowance and cannot afford to go to the pool. Once again in her infinite wisdom the mother springs forth another idea, a Kool-Aid stand. With renewed vigor and a greater purpose they go to work mixing Kool-Aid packets into pitchers, adding way too much sugar, and filling the remaining space with ice cubes. They heft the old card table to the front of the yard, take an old board and write "Kool-Aid 10 Cents". About four hours later the two boys had raised, five dollars and thirty-one cents, more than enough for their trip to the local pool.
This simple story illustrates the relationship, in a very simple way, between a civilizations economic development and its social development. In many cases through out history economic development came because of a desire to have a greater amount of something. That something could range from a simple trip to the local pool or to having the ability to amass the power to control nations and hundreds of thousands of people.
Such was the case in an ancient civilization that emerged in the area of the Yucatan Peninsula known as the Aztecs. In the article "Trade in the Aztec Civilization" Richard Ellis and Clarence Walton discuss the socioeconomic development of this intriguing, ancient Civilization. They discuss the evolution of a well defined class system.