This culture’s name became a term akin to “Renaissance man,” evoking their skill in “red and black ink” and rainbow cotton fields. This culture formerly named Arkansas’s Plum Bayou Mounds. Charles Di Peso misattributed Paquimé’s (“pah-kee-MAY’s”) Medio period to turquoise merchants from this culture, whose possible artifacts include skull racks and butterfly pectorals. This culture’s Corral (“ko-RAHL”) phase, whose diaspora may coincide with the Nicarao and Pipil (“pee-PEEL”) migrations, preceded its innovations of serpent columns and basalt Atlantean warriors in Hidalgo (“ee-DAHL-go”) during a Postclassic phase named for a mythic “place of reeds.” A discredited theory held that this culture of circa 950 to 1150 CE invaded the Maya city of Chichén Itzá. This culture was conflated with Teotihuacán (“tay-oh-tee-wah-KAHN”) in later Nahua codices. For 10 points, what culture inspired the Aztec paradise of Tōllān with its city of Tula? ■END■
ANSWER: Toltecs [or toltecas or Tōltēkah or Tōltēkatl; accept Toltec Empire or Toltec Mounds; accept Tula Grande or Tula Chico or Tula de Allende until “Tula” is read; accept Tōllān until read; accept toltecayotl or toltequidad; prompt on Nahuas or Nahuatl or Nahuan until “Nahua” is read; prompt on Aztatlan interaction sphere; reject “Mexica” or “Aztlán”] (Scholars still debate much about the Toltecs, including if Tōllān was primarily identified with Tula or with many great cities. The idea that they ruled an “empire” is largely disfavored.)
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= Average correct buzz position