The Red-haired Race

The Guanches were the people living in the Canary Islands before the Spanish conquest in the 15th century. Although it’s believed that they were related to the North African Berbers, we should bear in mind that they were of mixed race. Some, who were a brownish shade, were of the Mediterranean Race and as others were tall, white, fair or red-haired, nobody has questioned why red-haired mummies have been discovered in caves (1).

Statue of a Guanche in Tenerife, Canary Islands

It’s not known when the Guanches arrived in the Canary Islands but, in common with people throughout the Early World, they claimed to be the survivors of a great flood which destroyed their former homeland (2). It’s generally believed that the deluge legends relate to the end of the Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. However, as we shall later see, there appears to have been  a worldwide catastrophe several thousand years later and it appears to be the origin of the hundreds of flood stories that were told by the Ancients. 

Newgrange Ireland which is associated with the Tuatha de Danaan

Could it be that the Tuatha intermarried with the Celts and that this is why so many Irish people have red hair? The highest proportion of red-haired people in Europe is in Scotland which also suggests a mixing of early races in that country. Over the years, Classical, and other scholars, have commented on the red hair of some of the European tribes such as the Belgae –Gallo-Germanic tribes in Northern Gaul, from whom the name Belgium was derived, and Boudica, the queen of the Celtic Iceni, was described as a tall women with flowing red hair.
   The story becomes more intriguing when we find that, prior to the arrival of the Europeans, there may have been red-haired people in parts of North and Central America. The native Paiute in Nevada, for example, have legends about a war in which their ancestors fought, and destroyed, a tall red-haired race who they called the Si-te-cah. Sceptics place little significance on their legends but in Mayan temple art, in Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan, there are paintings of tall, white, men with flowing golden hair in scenes of conflict (3 ) and as we shall see, there are also traces of tall, white, red heads in various parts of South America.

The Temple of the Warriors in Chichen Itza Mexico where there are paintings of golden haired light-skinned men.

Matto Grosso, the third largest state in area in Brazil , lies in the west of the country and half of its north region is covered by the Amazon rain forest. Col. P. H. Fawcett, the famous British explorer who disappeared there in 1925, was  fascinated with legends of white tribes, and mysterious lost cities, and so  he went there on several expeditions, between 1906 and 1925, and one of the things that amazed him were the reports of sightings of blue-eyed, red-haired, Indians (4). Harold. T. Wilkins, an authority on the mysteries of South America, relates that an old Spanish historian reported that there was a tall red-haired, bearded, Amazon people, the Mayorumas, ‘whose skin was so white that they resembled the English or Flemish peoples’ (5) and William F. Dankenbring adds that builders of Brazil’s Trans-Amazon Highway also discovered the existence of a white skinned, red-bearded tribe (6).
    Harold T. Wilkins relates that, in 1929, the American traveller Lawrence Griswold was captured by Shuara Indians and he was taken up the Rio Juara one of the many tributaries of the Amazon. One day he, and his savage captors, came across the ruins of an ancient city where he saw pyramids, and a horseshoe shaped amphitheatre, and the small tribal elder tried to convince Griswold that the city was built by his tribes’ ancestors. However, this was obviously untrue as he claimed that its tall, ‘red-haired’, builders were changed into his people ‘due to their wicked behaviour before the Flood’. Griswold was very lucky that he was a tall red-head as the Indians thought that he was of the lost race and this is why they saved his life after capturing him. Griswold was later escorted to the nearest post on the Amazon and, from there, he made his way back to New York (7). As in the Canary Islands, red-haired mummies have also been found in Peru and there is evidence to suggest that tall, red-headed, whites were involved in the early history of this region ( 8).
When he was investigating the origin of the Redin, the earlier red-haired, white ,population in the Maldives, (9)Thor Heyerdahl extended his research to the Indian sub-continent. Although he found cultural similarities between some parts of the two areas, his unique  study was not conclusive. What he should have noted is that red hair and blue eyes can be found among some of the people in the Western and Northern parts of South Asia. The indications are that there was a migration of red-heads into this region thousands of years ago but where did these people come from?  What we do know is that Indian legends tell of giant, demon-like, beings ,the Rakshashas, who had red hair and beards. The Rakshasas are said to have been the enemies of man and it is said that they fought the gods. These Indian legends may have given rise to a dislike of red-haired people in the country and to have prompted Donald A. Mackenzie to report, a 100 years ago, that ‘a native girl with auburn locks is not cared for as a bride’ (10).
We can now take this story a step further. In Ancient Egypt, a popular, allegorical, story, which I have decoded, tells of the conflict between the gods and an evil red-haired race. This legend influenced Egyptian Afterlife traditions, and customs, and it was the reason why, at one time in the country’s long history, red haired people were sacrificed (11). In the New Kingdom, though, attitudes had changed. Egypt now had a tall red-haired king. His name was Ramasses 11 and he resembled the tall, white, Guanches in the Canary Islands (12).  But that’s another fascinating story.

Conclusions

  In various parts of the Early World, there were legends of an advanced, fair to reddish haired, pre-deluge, race who, according to some traditions, were in conflict with ‘The Gods’. But who were the gods in this era and what did happen? One of the stories told about this appears in the mystical, allegorical, writings about Enoch in which non earthly beings, who were like white men, escort Enoch to a high place to watch the evil  behaviour of men who are symbolised by animals. The animals begin to fight each other and the white beings send down destruction on them (13).  Enoch’s non earthly companions were based on the Annunaki, of Sumerian tradition, who reputedly caused the Flood, and whose leaders also appeared in the traditions of  other various people, such as the Babylonians, Egyptians and Assyrians, in the intervening years.
    As the red-haired whites were tall, they might also have been the pre-deluge race of giants mentioned in the folklore of many early cultures and their conflict with the visiting ‘sky-people’ might have been the origin of the Greek story of the war between gods and giants. Because they were thought to be descended from the evil race, red-haired  people have been badly treated over the years such as being sacrificed to the gods in Ancient Egypt and later being accused of witchcraft and of having bad tempers. Evidence suggests that people of this description were living in various parts of the world such as in North Western Europe and in the Americas and there are also traces of them on some of the Pacific Islands including Easter Island (14). And finally, there is evidence to suggest that the destruction of the previous age happened 5,000 years ago around which time there was major flooding, and climate change, in various parts of the world, followed by the rebirth, (not the birth as is generally believed by scholars), of civilization (15).