On February 22, 1498, a Christopher Columbus in the mid -1940s written in writing That his succession in the Italian port city of Genoa would be maintained for his family “because I came there and I was born”.
Although most historians consider the document as a recorded and dried record of the birthplace of the famous explorer, some questioned his authenticity and wondered if there was more in history.
Last year, a survey of several decades conducted by the judicial scientist José Antonio Lorente of the University of Granada in Spain appeared to support the affirmations according to which Columbus is perhaps not of Italian origin after all, but was in fact born somewhere in Spain to parents of Jewish ancestry.
The revelation was announced in October as part of a Special program broadcast in Spain To celebrate the arrival of Columbus in the new world on October 12, 1492.
It is important to keep in mind that Science by the media Must be considered with caution, especially when there is no publication evaluated by peers to examine critically.
“Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we cannot really evaluate what was in the documentary because they did not propose any data of the analysis,” the former director of Spain and Nuño Domínguez, Antonio Alonso told Antonio Alonso. Spanish news service, the country.
“My conclusion is that the documentary never shows the DNA of Columbus and, as scientists, we do not know which analysis has been undertaken.”
However, historical documents are more and more Challenge – and reinforced – by forensic analyzes of biological files, increasing the possibility that Columbus's own DNA can potentially reveal information on its family history.
Based on Interpretations of files Written when he was an adult, the man known in a large part of the Western world by the Anglicized name Christopher Columbus was born Cristoforo Columbo between the end of August and at the end of October in 1451 in Genoa, the lively capital of the northwest Italian region of Liguria.
It was only later in life as a young man in their twenties rushed to the west In Lisbon, Portugal, in search of wealthy customers who could finance his daring attempt to take a “shortcut” in the east by completely heading in the other direction.
Although most historians accept court documents placing their birthplace in Genoa as a real-deal, Speculation of an alternative heritage has been launched for decades.
A persistent rumor keeps Columbus was secretly Jewish, born in Spain at a time of intense religious persecution and ethnic cleaning. Supporters of the complaint Cite curious anomalies in his will and his interpretations of syntax in his letters.
Now it seems that his own genes can provide a new line of evidence.
Lorente and her team of researchers said in the special television that their analysis of chromosome y and mitochondrial DNA drawn from the remains of the son of Columbus, Ferdinand and his brother Diego, is compatible with a Spaniard or Sephardic Jew heritage.
This does not categorically exclude Genoa, of course, and there is no place in Europe as a place of birth for the explorer.
Indeed, the Jews exiled from Spain at the end of the 15th century just when Columbus made his historic journey flooded in the Italian city Asylum research, but with little success.
But all deserves to the conclusions of Lorente would make the Italian origin of Columbus a little more difficult to support, raising the way in which someone in the Sephardic Jewish heritage would come to be born in Genoa in the 1450s.
In order for the results to be widely adopted, the results should be carefully examined, if not convincingly replicated in detail.
Even then, there is more in the story of an individual than genetics – leave the case open the way in which an individual of a persecuted minority has really come to represent the spearhead of the Spanish expansion.
For the moment, the story of Columbus remains one of an Italian sailor who has drawn the attention of Spanish royalty, who has become both celebrated and despised for the brand he made inadvertently on history far from that “noble and powerful city by the sea“, His house in Genoa.
A previous version of this article was published in October 2024.
