Ona Grauer played Ayiana, the first living Ancient that modern-day humans encounter. She was left behind on the Ancient outpost in Antarctica between five and ten million years ago when her people took the city of Atlantis to the Pegasus Galaxy. She is seen in the opening of the Pilot episode of Stargate: Atlantis as the Ancients leave Earth for the Pegasus Galaxy. Researchers unearth her in a block of ice millions of years later in "Frozen", naming her after the Cherokee word for "eternal bloom" (the character's true name is never revealed). Ayiana proves alive when they defrost her, and learns the English language within hours. SG-1 deduce that the Ancients are advanced humans who evolved (not necessarily on Earth) millions of years ago and spawned humans throughout the Milky Way as their second evolution. As Ayiana is the unwitting carrier of the disease that ravaged her people millions of years ago, Ayiana infects all of the researchers, SG-1 and Dr. Fraiser. Ayiana uses her abilities to heal them, but weakened from the process, dies back at the SGC. It becomes known three years later that Ayiana's virus bears similarities to the biological weapon created by the Ori.
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