A Kindling of Ancient Memory

A Kindling of Ancient Memory (A' beothachadh na cuimhne aosda)

Alice C. Linsley


I've been corresponding with a descendant of the Ainu/Anu people who migrated thousands of years ago to Newfoundland and Labrador and to the eastern coast of Canada. My correspondent's native name is Sea’Key (the ’ is a little click made with the tongue.) His name means White Salmon with a Heart of Gold. He has been very generous with his time, sharing many accounts of his people's history.

He writes, "We are called MicMac now but early we were called the Beothique by the French and Beothuck by the English. Our people are said to be extinct, but we just left when the shooting started. A few 100 French did not wipe out 10,000’s of natives. It is said we migrated in 2 waves to Nova Scotia and Labrador."

MicMac or Mi’kmaq means friend. It may be derived from an early word Nikmaq, meaning kin-friend, but most Micmac (Mikmaq) refer to themselves as L’nuk, meaning the people.

The early name of the territory of Sea'Key's people was Khan O Dan, or Can a dan, which became "Canadian" to the French. Sea'Kay reports that according to the oral tradition of his people, they came in two waves from the Middle East to Scandinavia, then to Greenland and to the Hudson Bay area of Eastern Canada. This places him in Haplogroup X2b5, which traces the maternal line (Mitochondrial DNA).

This is a different route of migration than that taken by other Old World peoples coming to North America across Eurasia and the Bering Strait. If Sea'Key is correct that his clans are in mtDNA haplogroup X, there no no genetic trail across Eurasia. The dispersion of Haplogroup X is shown below. The greatest concentrations are indicated by the darker shade. MtDNA traces lineage by the mitochondria, received from mothers.

The heaviest concentration of mtDNA haplogroup X is in Eastern Canada which is where Sea’Kay lives. The estimate is upwards of 55% in some tribes and averages at around 25%. The next highest concentration, about 40%, is found in the Druze of the Middle East.

Only 7% of the Dene (Navajo) are in Haplogroup X. Their language has been connected to Ket, a Yeniseic language spoken by a very small Siberian population. However, Haplogroup X is virtually non-existent in Siberia, the land route to North America proposed by some anthropologists. According to Sea'Key, the MicMac did not come that way. They came along the coastal route through the British Isles to Finland and Greenland and on to Labrador and the eastern seaboard of Canada.

The genetic sequences of Haplogroup X diverged from Haplogroup N which originated in the region of the Lower Nile. Haplogroup X diverged further about 30,000 years ago with two sub-groups X1 and X2 now identified. Overall Haplogroup X accounts for about 2% of the population of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa.

Sub-group X1 is restricted to North and East Africa, and also the Near East. Sub-group X2 appears to have undergone population expansion and dispersal after the last glacial maximum, between 21,000 and 18,000 years ago. Sub-group X1 is more strongly present in the Near East, the Caucasus, and Mediterranean Europe. There are concentrations of sub-group X2 in Georgia (8%), the Orkney Islands (7%) and among the Israeli Druze (27%), most of whom live in Galilee.


The Paternal Line: Y-DNA

The Ainu of Japan appear to have a point of origin in Africa before 70,000 years ago. The Asia-Africa connection is found in Y-DNA Haplogroup DE. DE is unique because it is distributed in several geographically distinct clusters. Immediate subclade, Haplogroup D, is normally found only in eastern Asia, and the other immediate subclade, Haplogroup E, is common in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.


Common symbols and scripts

Micmac symbols suggest a point of origin in the Nile Valley. Studies of the Ainu Micmac hieroglyphics makes it clear that their ancestors traveled across the great oceans.

As Sea'Key called to my attention, there is also a correlation between the old Hebrew alphabet and the Ainu alphabet in Japan. Both appear to be based on a common older writing system.


According to the Greenland Saga, Sea'Kay's ancestors used bows and arrows. These weapons characterized the Ainu of the Nile whose land was called Ta-Seti which means "land of the bow."  There is a relation to the name of the ruler Seth and to the name of the sixteenth division of priests based in Nazareth, the division of Hapi-tsets.

Nyland (2001) found that many names of places and common objects in Hebrew are closely related to the Saharan proto-languages, the languages spoken by Abraham's Kushite ancestors.

In ancient Egyptian tera-ntr refers to a ruler-priest and among the Ainu tera means priest. The Ainu word for water is aka, which corresponds to asta, the Old Nubian word for water.


Movement out of Africa

The Ainu migrations are not shown on the Bradshaw Foundation maps of migration out of East Africa. However, the Ainu are at the center of Cavalli-Szforza's Genetic Distance Chart, which is what would be expected of an archaic population.

The mating structure of the Ainu rulers appears to be similar to the structure of the Horites who were also red, according to Genesis 36.  Abraham's father is associated with the Nilotic Annu and he was a Horite. The dispersion of the Ainu can be explained in part by their marriage and ascendancy pattern whereby younger sons were sent away to establish territories for themselves.

The Horites named in Genesis 36 called their land Edom, which means red. David, one of their descendants, is said to have had a red skin tone. The red skin tone was enhanced by exposure to the sun. The red tone represented the ruler as the servant of Ra, whose emblem was the sun. The queen made herself white to represent the moon.

The Ainu appear among the ancient Kushites who were explorers and kingdom builders. Their migration out of the Nile region has been confirmed through DNA and migration studies. Though we first meet Abraham in Mesopotamia (Gen. 12), he is a descendant of Nimrod, the son of Kush (Gen. 10:8), who built a kingdom the length of the Euphrates.

Among the Kushites there was a caste of ruler-priests known as Horites. They are called "Horites" because they were devotees of Hor (Horus in Greek). The oldest temples dedicated to Horus have been located in modern-day Sudan at Nekhen. From here the Horites spread their religion across the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. This extended from present-day Benin to India, China and Cambodia.  There is little doubt that ancient Nilotic peoples, including the Annu, were masterful seamen and traveled widely. It is also evident that they didn't all migrate the same direction or at the same time.

Kushites, Egyptians and other Nilotic peoples varied in appearance. Eye colors included blue, gray, green and brown, and some men wore full beards while others were beardless. The typical Egyptian and the Beja had a reddish skin tone. Nubians ranged from black to red. Red and black Nubians are shown on ancient Egyptian monuments such as Ramesses' Great Temple at As.

Detail from a Ippolito Rosellini painting 

done during the Franco-Italian Expedition to Egypt in 1828

Africans exhibit great genetic diversity even today.

This is how Sea’Key describes his people: "We have beards and green eyes and we are very tall, between 6’ and 6’6”." Here is a photo of one of his ancestors (shown left).

The Ainu were the first settlers of Japan. They were said to appear more Caucasian than Asian. In literature they are often referred to as the "hairy Ainu."

On the right is an image of an Ainu elder from Hokkaido Japan. Compare to the photo of one Sea'Kay's ancestor. Note the similar robes and almost identical headdresses. Note also the reddish skin tone of these Ainu elders. 

It appears that the Ainu moved out of the Nile Valley in multiple waves and migrated in different directions. They were seafarers, explorers, warriors and kingdom builders. There are Ainu in China.

The Ainu were among the aboriginal peoples of the Nile Valley and the rulers of many of the river shrines. One of their cities was the prestigious shrine city call iunu - meaning "pillared place" and known as "On" in the Bible. The Greeks called it City of the Sun (Heliopolis). The pyramids at Giza, Saqqara and Abusir were aligned to the great obelisk (pillar) at Heliopolis.

The Ainu are also called Annu and Hanu.

Related reading:  Solving the Ainu Mystery; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; Distribution of Y-Chromosome Among North American Natives; Afro-Asiatics in North America Before Columbus; Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Populations of the Americas; The High Places of the Archaic World; New Study Refutes Theory of How Humans Populated North America