He sailed the seas with the backing of Spanish royalty, expanded European knowledge of the planet and shaped history. Yet the true origins and identity of Christopher Columbus, the man hailed as having “discovered” the New World, remain uncertain.
Now, an international team of scientists is aiming to clear up the doubts with an investigation that is expected to conclude 20 years after it started. Using DNA taken from remains of the explorer and his relatives, they hope to ascertain once and for all whether Columbus was, as mainstream historians accept, of Genoese descent or from elsewhere in southern Europe – or beyond.
“Columbus’s achievements were extremely important, he marked the beginning of the modern world,” says Eduardo Esteban, president of the Galician Christopher Columbus Association.
Galicia, in northwestern Spain, is just one of several candidates vying to be proclaimed the explorer’s true birthplace.
“The question as to whether he belonged to one place or another is very important for a nation or a region,” Esteban adds. “It’s like a debate over where Jesus was born.”
The project began in 2003, when a team led by scientists from the University of Granada exhumed the remains of Columbus in Seville cathedral to take DNA samples. They also took DNA from the bones of his son, Hernando, and brother, Diego, leading to confirmation that the three were indeed related.
But confirmation of his birthplace is the real challenge. The widely accepted theory is that Columbus was born in Genoa, in what was to become Italy, in 1451, to a family of wool weavers. In 1492, he led a sea expedition endorsed by Spain’s Catholic monarchs seeking to establish a new route to the Far East. Instead, Columbus reached the Caribbean, marking the beginning of a period of European contact with the Americas which would lead to settlement and conquest. He died in 1506 in the northern Spanish city of Valladolid.
The Granada University team has described this as “the most ambitious scientific investigation there has been into the origins of Columbus, compiling the work carried out by the different theories which have emerged so far”.
Those theories include the Galician proposal, as well others claiming Columbus was from the Balearics, the Mediterranean coast, northern Spain, Portugal, or even eastern Europe. DNA from the remains of individuals purported to be relatives of Columbus according to these claims will be compared to that of the explorer, in the hope of finding a match. The University of North Texas and the University of Florence are also taking part, with a Mexican clinic due to verify the results.
“The Galician theory doesn’t need a genetic analysis or DNA verification to be confirmed,” says Esteban, a professional pharmacist. He adds that he is “delighted to be part of this project in order to give the Galician theory visibility”.
He says the long-standing official theory regarding the explorer’s birthplace came about due to a “deliberate mistake” by Italian historians keen to claim him as their own. They exploited the existence of a Genoese man who shared Columbus’s name but who had nothing to do with his exploits, Esteban says.
Yet others are equally confident regarding their own, competing, claims. One states that Columbus was a Majorcan with royal blood: the illegitimate son of the Prince of Viana, brother of King Ferdinand, the monarch who backed his breakthrough voyage.
Gabriel Verd, a Majorcan author who has supported this hypothesis, has described the Genoese claim as “a cock-and-bull story”. He says that the DNA tests will “either prove that he is [Majorcan] or it won’t prove a thing. No other theory is possible”.
Meanwhile, yet another theory proposes that Columbus was Jewish and from the Mediterranean port city of Valencia. His obscure early life, according to this hypothesis, can be explained by the fact that he sought to hide his Jewish background to avoid persecution by the fervently Catholic regime of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
Elsewhere in Spain, there are also claims by the regions of Navarre and Castilla La Mancha to Columbus’s provenance. In neighbouring Portugal, one theory states that the explorer was a pirate from the city of Coimbra whose real name was Pedro de Ataíde. Croatia and Poland also have claims.
José Antonio Lorente, who is leading the Granada University research, told The Irish Times that the project is progressing and “we now have the results that need to be compared to those that are being provided by possible relatives [of Columbus], according to the different theories about his origins”.
The process has taken so long – two decades – in great part because the researchers were waiting for forensic technology to improve enough to make the results irrefutable. Their conclusions are expected later this year, when the established biography of a hugely significant historical figure will either be confirmed or debunked.
