While Columbus, credited as discoverer of the ‘New World’ has become an increasingly controversial figure in the regions he ‘discovered’ as a colonial conqueror and promoter of slavery, another controversy has re-ignited in the ‘Old World’ over just who he was.
Long-described as a Genoese seafarer hired out to the Spanish monarchy to explore for gold and a route to Southeast Asia and India, there have also been claims that he was Portuguese or Spanish, including that he might have been one of the ‘hidden Jews’ who escaped expulsion from Spain in 1492.
Now, a study conducted by Italy’s University of Florence and North Texas University may give an answer definitive enough to satisfy the science-minded but likely never to quell indignant expressions of national pride. The study is based on DNA analysis of bones from Columbus’s tomb in Seville Cathedral.
The first step, in 2003, was confirming that the bones in the tomb are actually Columbus. The task was complicated by the fact that his remains traveled almost as much after his death as before. At his death in 1506, he was buried in a convent at Valladolid, Spain; seven years later, his son Diego died and specified in the will that he and his father were to be buried at a monastery in Seville, where they remained until 1536, when both were moved to the cathedral in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, then a Spanish colony. In 1796, when France seized the country, the retreating Spaniards took Columbus with them to Havana, and then in 1898 back to Seville.
The 2003 DNA test, comparing material from the Seville tomb with known descendants, only partly unlocked the mystery. There is another set of partial remains, held in Santo Domingo, which are either a rival claimant, or a remnant left behind in 1796; the Dominican government has refused access.
The new study, using tools and data not available fifteen years ago, hopes not only to confirm that it is Columbus, but to give greater certainty to his origins.
