It seems like shows and books always discuss human sacrifice in South and Central America and rarely anywhere else. Was it common elsewhere? Why does discussion always seem to center around South and Central America?
In the Northwest Coast cultures in North America, slaves were sacrificed by chiefs in rituals associated with house dedications, deaths of chiefs or chiefs' close relatives and in displays of wealth. This was well documented in NW tribes north of the mouth of the Columbia. Not much shows up about slave sacrifice south of the Columbia.
See: Leland Donald Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America. University of California Press, Aug 1, 1997
Human sacrifice was a feature of pre-Christian religion in many parts of Europe, continuing into the 10th century in Scandinavia and the 12th century among the Wends of northern Poland.
The Irish definitely practiced ritual sacrifice from around 2000 BCE to around 500 BCE. There are dubious accounts from medieval monks who credit St Patrick with stamping out human sacrifice to pagan gods as late as the 5th century, but this is harder to substantiate. We do, however, have concrete evidence of ritual sacrifice in that Bronze Age period. These were young men who had been elected king, given then task of ensuring the favour of the gods for their subjects e.g. good harvests. Should the kingdom's luck turn, however, the king would be killed and a new king anointed.
As we see in the Americas, such sacrifices typically took place at a specific time of year and included eating of ritual foods. The victim would be taken to the borders of his kingdom, mutilated to disqualify him from power in the Otherworld, then killed and dumped in the bogland between kingdoms. (Bogland also held religious significance in pagan Ireland as a 'boundary place', where the world of men and the Otherworld met.) Most of what we know comes from the fact that bog can preserve organic matter, under certain circumstances. A number of these sacrificial victims have been found intact, and are on display in the National Museum of Archeology.
Sadly, Gaelic pagans did not cross paths with any literate early-modern observers and they left little written or artistic record of their religious practices. I would suggest that it was these factors that set Mesoamerican civilisations apart, not the novelty of human sacrifice itself.