TOLTEC RELIGION. In pre-Columbian central Mexico, Tolteca literally meant "people living at a place named Tollan [i.e., among the rushes]." However, even then the name had no single application, and it has none today. Because there was more than one place called Tollan, the word Toltec refers not to a single culture or religion, but rather to at least five specific groups of people, all belonging to Postclassic Mesoamerica: (1) the inhabitants of what is now the archaeological site of Tula de Allende near Mexico City, (2) the inhabitants or, more precisely, the elite, called Toltec-Maya, of Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, (3) the inhabitants of Tollan as it is described in central Mexican historical documents of the sixteenth century, (4) militant leading groups in other parts of Mesoamerica claiming descent from a place called Tollan, (5) members of various, often quite different, ethnic groups, all bearing the typological name...