The priest was... otherworldly.

Revered and respected, yes, but their domain was not of

material things.

Since expression of wealth was restricted by class, the only way to display fabulous goods was to
advance up the social ladder or to receive special privileges of display from the ruling class.

The land aspect is particularly interesting. As a general rule, only the nobility personally owned
land in the Aztec system. The rest was held in trust by the state at the calpulli (neighborhood)
level. Each family was granted a plot of land and, so long as they productively worked it, it was
effectively theirs.

Abandonment though negligence or absenteeism meant the land could be reclaimed and given
to another family. Kellog's Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700 covers this
dynamic very well, particularly as the colonial era starts to generate a plethora of legal
documents in Spanish and Nahuatl.

To lope towards a conclusion, wealth and status could be accrued in Aztec society through the
participation in the state bureaucracy, luxury good trade/crafts, military success, and/or
participation in religious ritual/tutelage.

Actual wealth had a variety of standard media of exchange, but this did not preclude other
common wealth goods like precious stones, exotic feathers, basic goods, luxury foods, etc. While
wealth could provide personal access to elites, it was only through those elites that wealth could
be openly displayed, and also only through them that personal ownership of land could be
granted. So while physical items were certainly an important factor in accruing wealth, there also
needs to be an acknowledgement of the social mores and actual laws which restricted access to
both goods and behaviors.

The development of the Bow and Arrow is considerably older in the Old World than in the New
World - perhaps 30,000 years old. In the New World it is a relatively late development with
(perhaps) early roots. Dates for initial development of this effective technology vary widely and
this has been the regularly debated in the New World literature at least for the last 50 years.
However, there is no doubt that bow and arrow technology preceded European entry into the
New World.

Alright, I'll give this a try, but note that this is by no means definitive and I won't even attempt
to go beyond the seventh century; from the way I interpret the evidence, the situation in the
first century of Islam was complicated enough, so I don't feel that my limited knowledge of the
eighth century will add anything to the discussion. If anyone who does know about the later
period is around, please do comment and add to this answer! My range of expertise is
unfortunately very limited :(
First of all, I think it is important to first qualify who a 'Byzantine' was. In fact, I personally don't
use that term at all, but only 'Roman'. However, being Roman in this period meant different
things to different people. Despite the 'fall' of the Roman empire that allegedly occurred in 476,
the empire in the seventh century was as diverse as ever. Transcaucasian princes, Arab
frontiersmen, Egyptian peasants, Berber chiefs, Roman popes, and more were all still subjects of
the emperor, so I find it difficult to generalise about their beliefs. Then there is the problem of
sources, since the seventh century is a particularly source-poor period - the Greek history-
writing tradition literally disappeared around 630, so we have to rely on fragmentary Syriac,
Armenian, and Coptic histories for the political narrative, which can occasionally be
supplemented by various ecclesiastical sources, such as letters, sermons, and conciliar records.
Trying to draw a coherent picture of Roman attitudes to Islam is therefore quite difficult,
something that I've already pointed out in my survey of the available evidence here. This is
however a fascinating question, so I'll do my best to tease out what is significant from we know
currently.

As you probably know, there is a rather fierce debate on what the nature of Islam was in this
period. You have already alluded to the view that Islam only took shape later, but there are many
views out there and I don't think there is a consensus yet. My own view is that Islam began as an
ecumenical apocalyptic movement that seized the contemporary Zeitgeist and, due to the
complex geopolitical situation of the time, was able to achieve territorial conquest with
surprising ease in the 630s and 640s; this movement then changed and solidified its stance over
time, sometime between the reign of Mu'awiyah and Abd al-Malik in the late seventh century.
This is however not a universal view, as others would argue that Islam already took the form we
all know today by the time of Muhammad's death. Indeed, details such as when Muhammad
died or when certain conquests occurred are equally debatable. This isn't strictly relevant, but I
think it is important to remember that it is difficult to construct an argument when there are so
many divergent views around. What follows is my interpretation, but do continue to explore this
fascinating topic beyond this answer, as I am no doubt wrong about many of the things I will talk
about.

One of the first deliberate mentions of Islam is found in a Roman propaganda pamphlet from
North Africa written in the 630s. It was aimed at Jews living within the Roman empire and
warned of a dark threat in the empire's eastern provinces:

Justus answered and said, “Indeed you speak the truth, and this is the great salvation: to believe
in Christ. For I confess to you, master Jacob, the complete truth. My brother Abraham wrote to
me that a false prophet has appeared. Abraham writes, ‘When [Sergius] the candidatus was
killed by the Saracens, I was in Caesarea, and I went by ship to Sykamina. And they were saying,
“The candidatus has been killed,” and we Jews were overjoyed. And they were saying, “A
prophet has appeared, coming with the Saracens and he is preaching the arrival of the anointed
one who is to come, the Messiah.”

And when I arrived in Sykamina, I visited an old man who was learned in the scriptures, and I
said to him, “What can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens?”
And he said to me, groaning loudly, “He is false, for prophets do not come with a sword and a
war-chariot. Truly the things set in motion today are deeds of anarchy, and I fear that somehow
the first Christ that came, whom the Christians worship, was the one sent by God, and instead of
him we will receive the Antichrist. Truly, Isaiah said that we Jews will have a deceived and
hardened heart until the entire earth is destroyed. But go, master Abraham, and find out about
this prophet who has appeared.” And when I, Abraham, investigated thoroughly, I heard from
those who had met him that one will find no truth in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of
human blood. In fact, he says that he has the keys of paradise, which is impossible.’ These things
my brother Abraham has written from the East.”

This is evidently an anti-Semitic account that tried to link Judaism to this new danger and aimed
to reaffirm the Jews' loyalty to the weakened empire (naturally through conversion to
Christianity rather than through reasoned arguments). There is a danger in trusting this source
too much, but there are too many incidental and deliberate references to the Arabs' links to
Judaism to dismiss this view entirely. A good example of this is the detailed account of pseudo-
Sebeos the Armenian historian from the 660s (quoted in the my link above), who wasn't that
anti-Semitic; he even portrayed a Jewish governor of Jerusalem in a rather positive way! More
generally, many Jews in this period had legitimate grievances against the empire - discrimination
against Jews were common in late antiquity (to call someone ‘the Jew’ was an insult, as evident
in the nickname given by miaphysite Christians to a sixth-century Chalcedonian bishop, Paul ‘the
Jew’), something that escalated in the seventh century. In 614 Jerusalem fell to the Persians, a
crisis of faith for many that also partially emboldened some local Jews to seize the initiative.
Massacres of Christians were recorded, many of which were no doubt much exaggerated by
outraged Christian authors, but they probably happened, especially as the Persians were quite
adroit at using the 'divide and conquer' strategy to control their new subjects.

Soon however the Persians realised that they needed to reconcile with the majority of the
population they now ruled, so Christianity was once again favoured and non-resident Jews
banned from moving into Jerusalem. This brief moment of relative freedom was however I think
rather important, as when Roman forces moved back into the region after 628 some
communities were not inclined to give in quietly, such as the Jewish community in the city of
Edessa. Nor were imperial forces particularly inclined to be tolerant, as emperor Heraclius
ordered the forced conversion of all Jews within the empire around 632. This was a quite
influential decree, since it was even recorded in a Frankish chronicle c.660, where it was
remarked that the Frankish king Dagobert loyally followed the emperor’s lead and did the same
for Jews in his kingdom as well. To what extent this actually happened is debatable, but we are
talking about perceptions here, so this at least reflected in part contemporary attitudes towards
the Jews.

This also illustrates why some Jews might be angry at the empire and why the North African
leaflet had to be written at a Jewish audience, if only to reassure them that Christianity was still
the best thing out there and that they really should obey imperial orders to convert. But there is
another angle to this, as in Arabic sources it is also attested that Islam was, at least initially,
inclusive of Jews, most famously in the Constitution of Medina, a document preserved in later
texts but is probably an original document from Muhammad’s time in Medina. The Qur’an is also
somewhat iffy on the issue, as it criticised Christians and Jews for their beliefs in some suras but
was more positive to them in others. I don’t think I can untangle this conundrum, but there is at
least enough evidence to argue that it is possible that Jews (and Christians) were part of the
early Arab conquests. As such, a jittery Roman administration was willing to seize upon what was
familiar to them, conventional rhetoric against Jews, and construct a response to the Arab
conquests by framing them as something deeply connected with Judaism. Perhaps the most
remarkable evidence comes not from Roman sources, but from writers in the west - the
Chronicle of pseudo-Fredegar in Gaul (c.660) and the Chronicle to 754 in Spain. Pseudo-Fredegar
recorded that:

Being well-read he [emperor Heraclius] practised astrology, by which art he discovered, God
helping him, that his empire would be laid waste by circumcised races.

This naturally led to Heraclius deciding that he must convert the circumcised people he knew
about, the Jews, to prevent this. This story is of course a later literary construction created to
explain what happened in the 630s, but as we are discussing attitudes rather than reality, this
fabrication is incredibly useful. A similar account, though truncated, can be found in the
Chronicle to 754, and we can assume that both stories had a Roman origin given the two writers’
familiarity with eastern affairs. From these sources, I would say that the Romans were aware
that Islam was somewhat linked to Judaism, but also that it was something different, since they
never explicitly described it as Judaism (the Romans definitely knew about how to differentiate
between different beliefs). This is why some historians would prefer to see Islam as a movement
originating from Judaism or, more likely in my opinion, to be originally a movement fully
inclusive of Jews, which allowed Romans to reimagine it as something that was instead
fundamentally based around Judaism, the traditional bogeyman within the empire.