New Study Discloses Christopher Columbus’s Jewish Heritage — in Time for Indigenous Peoples’ Day

The famed 15th century Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, was a Sephardic Jew, according to a new study out of Spain that took more than two decades to complete. The historic disclosure supposedly puts to rest the long-running debate about Columbus’s ancestry. Columbus, who was of Italian origin, was endorsed by Spain’s monarchs at the time, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, to embark on a voyage that would eventually lead him to North America. In the centuries following his death, there was debate about where Columbus’s remains had been buried, though the study that disclosed his Sephardi heritage also confirmed that he was interred at the Seville Cathedral in southern Spain.“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” the lead researcher for the study, Miguel Lorente told Spanish television station TVE, according to Reuters. ‘Ritratto di Cristoforo Colombo,’ Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, 1520, detail. Via Wikimedia CommonsColumbus’s remains were moved several times following his death at the age of 54 in 1506. His body’s journey began in Valladolid in Spain, then was moved to Seville before being relocated to the present-day Dominican Republic, where he had asked to be buried. In the 18th century, Columbus’s body was transported to Havana, Cuba, before some of his remains made their way back to Seville following the island country’s independence in 1898. “Both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin,” Mr. Lorente said of his methodology for discovering the explorer’s heritage. Despite the criticism of the study that could soon come, Mr. Lorente declared on TVE that “the outcome is almost absolutely reliable.”The disclosure came on Saturday — just two days before Columbus Day that celebrates the explorer’s voyage across the ocean, though some now refer to the holiday as Indigenous People’s Day. There had been long-running debate about Columbus’s origin, whether it be Italian, Greek, Basque, Spanish, Portuguese, or British. His now-confirmed Jewish heritage likely ties him to one of the darkest periods of Jewish history — the Inquisition. Isabella and Ferdinand forced Jews and Muslims living in Spain in the latter half of the 15th century to convert to Catholicism, or face prosecution and possible execution.

New Study Discloses Christopher Columbus’s Jewish Heritage — in Time for Indigenous Peoples’ Day

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