In 1970, U.S. archaeologist Phil Weigand happened to be visiting El Rincón water park near the village of Teuchitlán, Jalisco. In the swimming pool, his wife, historian Acelia García found an obsidian blade, which intrigued the couple. “Where has this come from?” they asked themselves. It turned out that the water park had once been the site of an ancient workshop where countless obsidian knives and blades had been produced. The couple then began hiking in the hills just above the balneario and ended up wandering among the ruins of the curious “round pyramids” now known as Los Guachimontones. Later, Weigand recalled the moment: “I stood on the largest pyramid, looked around and thought, ‘This is unexpected.’”
It turned out to be an understatement. The Weigands set aside a summer to explore the pyramids they had found and ended up spending the rest of their lives documenting a complex, highly organized society which had begun in western Mexico in 1000 BCE and had reached its apogee in 200 CE.
During his long career of over 50 years, Weigand moved from describing and mapping the ruins of the Teuchitlán Civilization to excavating their unique circular pyramids, remaining active at 74 years of age until his serious heart condition finally took its toll. He passed away on September 3.
Weigand’s “right-hand man” for many years at the Teuchitlán ruins was Dr. Rodrigo Esparza. “Mexico and Jalisco have lost a man who was as much an explorer and a visionary as were Carl Lumholtz, Désiré Charnay or Alexander Von Humbolt in their day,” he stated in an interview. “Dr. Phil Weigand came to western Mexico quite by accident and ended up embarking on an adventure that few individuals in the history of the world have ever experienced: the discovery of a lost civilization.”Esparza went on to describe the “gray veil” which hung over the ancient history of western Mexico during most of the 20th century, when it was assumed that whatever traces of civilization existed here had been brought by the Aztecs, Mayas or some other people. From the 1960’s onwards, however, the Weigands were investigating, interviewing and registering over 2,000 archaeological sites which allowed them to formulate the first hypotheses that western Mexico had been home to an unknown civilization.
“Phil was forced to face not only the mysteries of this region,” continued Esparza, “but also the hostility of his colleagues who refused to give him credit for his discoveries. They labeled him an inventor, a fraud and at times a ‘gringo loco’ but in spite of all these calumnies, he never wavered. Through articles, interviews, books and the constant support of El Colegio de Michoacán, he carried on. One day the governor of Jalisco, Alberto Cárdenas, came to Teuchitlán to check out Phil’s discovery. On that day, the governor said, ‘I don’t see anything at this site but a pile of rocks, but we’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt, to support you in your project.’ And that is how, with a little bit of money, he launched the archeological excavations of the Guachimontones on October 21, 1999, excavations that are still going on today. Now, 11 years after the start of the dig, more than 150,000 people visit the site yearly, a huge new Interactive Museum is about to open its doors and, perhaps most importantly, the Teuchitlán Civilization now figures in the textbooks of all the high schools of Jalisco and is today considered part of Mexico’s cultural patrimony and has even been declared a World Heritage Site.”
Phil Weigand was born in Nebraska in 1937 and grew up in Indiana. His father was a doctor and Phil at first planned to follow in his footsteps, but at the age of 18 he headed south into Mexico “trying to find out who he was.” In a recent interview with Spanish-language daily Mural, he tells how he crossed the border “in a dilapidated old car I bought for 175 dollars.” The music, the language and the history all fascinated him and he planned to stay in Zacatecas, “but a waiter from Jalisco told me how beautiful western Mexico was and I said to myself, ‘Well, I’ve come this far – a little trip further south won’t take much time.’”
But in Jalisco he met Acelia Garcia and his life changed. Not long afterward, he was studying anthropology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, taking his first steps toward a new career.
“Besides English and Spanish,” said fellow archaeologist Jorge Herrejón, “Phil understood French, German, Italian and Portuguese and had begun to learn Russian not long before his death. He was an indefatigable reader and had a personal library of over 4,000 books, most of which he had read and whose contents he remembered. He was interested in a wide variety of subjects, from garden plants to volcanology, from Nazi anti-Semitism to Ukrainian folk music.”
Weigand’s daughter Nena confirmed her father’s reading habits and wide interests. “Most people read one book at a time, but my father would read at least three at a time, usually leaving an open book in almost every room of the house. And as for his interests, well, he simply knew everything about everything. For example, we might be driving along a mountain road and someone might look out the window and say, ‘Oh, look at the pretty grass glowing in the sunlight – I wonder what it’s called.’ And my father would turn and say, ‘Well, that is called Bunch Grass. It doesn’t look like it, but it’s actually very fire resistant …’ and he would go on, telling us all about it. If there was ever a walking encyclopedia, he was it.”
My wife and I had the good fortune of enjoying Phil Weigand’s friendship for many years and witnessed with our own eyes how he could bring his wide knowledge of many subjects to uncover the mysteries of the past. In the 1980’s we had located what we thought was a most unusual cave just above the town of La Venta del Astillero, about ten kilometers west of Guadalajara. Our explorations revealed that this cave has hundreds of meters of narrow passages running in straight lines with small round “skylights” in the roof, all of them approximately 11 meters apart. Several speleologists came from afar just to see this curious “cave with 75 entrances,” but no one could explain how it had been formed.
One day, we brought archaeologist Chris Beekman to the cave and he immediately pointed out hatchet marks on the walls and footholes in the skylights, declaring that what we had found was a man-made structure. But exactly what was it? This was only clarified when Beekman invited Phil Weigand to have a look. No sooner had Phil stepped into the darkness of the huge entrance room than he declared, “John and Susy, this is no cave. This is a qanat, a kind of underground aqueduct invented in Persia 3,000 years ago. The technology was so good, it spread across the Middle East to Spain and the Spaniards brought it here to Mexico.”
Of course, a few days later, Phil was showing us diagrams of a Persian qanat from one of those 4,000 books in his library.
According to Dr. Eduardo Williams of the Colegio de Michoacán, which unwaveringly supported Weigand’s work during his long career, “official Mexican archaeology” was, for many years, “principally preoccupied with the function of artifacts and where they fit in time and space. It was dedicated in great measure to the reconstruction of archaeological sites for the purpose of tourism and nationalism, forgetting almost completely the anthropological perspectives.”
To this scene, Phil Weigand brought “an interdisciplinary perspective and an effort towards integration which combined the focal points of various anthropological disciplines to arrive at a holistic vision of the past. He himself said, ‘my professional goal was to be an anthropologist – not an archaeologist, not an ethnologist and not an ethnohistorian, but all three of these at the same time.’”
Thanks to his humanistic focus and the interdisciplinary strategy he used in his studies, said Williams, Phil Weigand crossed the boundaries of the historical and anthropological understanding of western Mexico, and deserves to be recognized as a true Renaissance Man.
Phil Weigand was a great man, but he still managed to remain a generous and open man, always ready to give his time to others no matter how humble they might be. He will be remembered not only in the history books, but in the hearts of all who knew him.
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