Research Claims Christopher Columbus Was a Spanish Jew
New DNA research has revealed that Christopher Columbus was in fact most likely to have been a Sephardic Jew from Spain and not as has commonly believed to have hailed from the Italian city of Genoa.
Scientists believe the explorer, whose expedition across the Atlantic in 1492 changed the course of world history, was probably born in Valencia.
It is believed he concealed his Jewish identity, or converted to Catholicism, to escape religious persecution by the Catholic Monarchs. Indeed, it was they who following the final defeat of the Moors with the capture of Granada in 1492 ordered the expulsion or forced conversion of the remaining estimated 300,000 Jews in Spain.
The study began in 2003, when José Antonio Lorente, professor of forensic medicine at Granada University, and the historian Marcial Castro, exhumed what were believed to be the remains of Columbus from Seville Cathedral.
His DNA tests on bones found in the tomb in Seville Cathedral proved that they were the remains of Columbus.
They also took DNA samples from the tomb, and from the bones of Columbus’ son, Hernando, and brother, Diego.
The study which was suspended in 2005 because the research team felt that DNA technology at the time required a significant sample of the bones of the explorer and “very little information was obtained” was restarted in 2021 with new techniques applied.
The programme – which aired on Spain’s national broadcaster RTVE on Saturday night – coincided with Spain´s National Day and which also celebrates the Spanish race in the Americas.
The documentary claims that the theory of a Jewish Columbus “answers all the questions concerning his life. Why did he write in Spanish with no trace of Italian in his writings? Sephardic Jews spoke the languages of the Iberian Peninsula, so Columbus must have learned Spanish at home.” The documentary emphatically states that the sailor was “Jewish by race, religion, nation, and, above all, by heart, because this man exudes Judaism in his writings.”
Columbus died aged 55 in the city of Valladolid in 1506 but wished to be buried on the island of Hispaniola that is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. His remains were taken there in 1542, then moved to Cuba in 1795 and in 1898 brought to Seville where he has laid since.
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