According to Miguel Lorente Acosta, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Granada in Spain, Christopher Columbus was Jewish, as suggested by his DNA. He said the DNA showed a “western Mediterranean” origin, but could not point categorically to a country or region.
Investigations into the skeletal remains of Christopher Columbus and his son, Hernando, revealed a Jewish ancestry, a fact that the explorer chose to hide during an era when Jews faced persecution in Spain and most of Europe.
Prof. Acosta revealed on Saturday that “both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial chromosome of Hernando, there are traits compatible with Jewish origins.”
Lorente concluded the investigation, which spanned 22 years, by analyzing minute samples of remains interred in Seville Cathedral, thought to be the final burial site of Columbus, despite various competing assertions. He and his team compared these remains with those of established relatives and descendants. Their results were revealed in a documentary entitled “Columbus DNA: The True Origin,” aired on Spain’s national broadcaster, TVE.
“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” Lorente said in the show. “And both in the Y chromosome, and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”
The results contest the long-held belief that Columbus was an Italian navigator hailing from Genoa, a notion that has been perpetuated in educational materials for centuries. Additionally, they claim to resolve the controversy surrounding the location of Columbus’s final burial site.
Francesc Albardaner, a historical researcher on Christopher Columbus, in 2016 wrote “It is perfectly known and accepted that if Columbus could realize his first discovery voyage to the New World it was due to the support given by the merchant and “escrivà de ració,” Lluís de Santangel to him. Santangel, neglecting any kind of geographical or theological reasonings and basing his support only on economic decisions, gave his full support to Columbus’s voyage. The second personage of the court of King Ferdinand who also helped Columbus very much was Gabriel Sánchez, general treasurer of the Crown of Aragon. Both men belonged to Jewish converted families with their origin in the kingdom of Aragón, that moved to Valencia afterwards. Alfonso Sánchez, Gabriel’s brother, was living in Valencia and became the head of a huge trading company that was sending ships annually from Alexandria to Bristol and Galway.”
Albardaner contended that “Jews could only spend three days at a time in Genoa by law at that time,” a fact that made Columbus’s Genovese origins an impossibility.
“Around 200,000 Jews were living in Spain in Columbus’s time. In the Italian peninsula, it is estimated that there were only between 10,000 and 15,000. There was a much larger Jewish population in Sicily of around 40,000, but we should remember that Sicily, in Columbus’s time, belonged to the Crown of Aragon,” Albardaner said, supporting the notion that the discoverer of the New World was a Spanish Jew.
