Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Valencia, claims new study

The 15th-century explorer Christopher Columbus, whose travels led to the colonization of the Americas, was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe, according to a 22-year-long study by Spanish forensic scientist Miguel Lorente.

The assertion supposedly solves the mystery of the explorer’s origins, which have variously been described as Genoese, Portuguese, Greek, Basque and even British.

To reach his conclusion, Lorente had what is believed to be the tomb of Columbus in Seville Cathedral exhumed, together with that of his son Hernando.

Doubt over Seville as Columbus’ last resting place stems from the fact that, as in life, he moved around a lot once dead.

First, on his request, he was taken from the city of Valladolid to be buried on the island of Hispaniola – modern-day Haiti/Dominican Republic – which he discovered in 1492.

He was later moved to Cuba in 1795 before being returned to Spain in in 1898, presumably to be lain to rest in Seville’s Cathedral alongside his son.

Lorente obtained additional ‘evidence’ for his study from a tin can filled with water in an earthenware factory set up in a former Carthusian monastery in Seville, supposedly containing the remains of the explorer’s brother, Diego Columbus.

Within Columbus’ tomb, however, there was little to work with. Forensic anthropologist Miguel Botella told Spanish news site El País, there were only 150 grams of bone fragments, the largest being four centimeters in length.

The DNA from these were compared with the DNA of Hernando and Diego, and the findings revealed in a documentary titled “Columbus DNA: The true origin.”

“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” Lorente said in the program.

“And both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”

The theory is that Columbus would have concealed his Jewishness and converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution from the Catholic Kings, Isabella and Ferdinand – the same monarchs who funded his first voyage.

Sephardic is derived from the word for 'Spain' in Hebrew. Many Jews lived and thrived in Spain under the earlier Muslim rulers but were told by the Catholic Kings to either convert or be expelled. Most Sephardic Jews now live in Israel.

Lorente adds that Columbus would have been born in Western Europe and goes on to narrow that down to the city of Valencia on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.

“Almost absolutely reliable,” Lorente’s claims have, however, been contested by a number of forensic experts within Spain itself.

Geneticist Antonio Alonso, told El País, “From the scientific point of view, no assessment can be made after watching the documentary, since it does not provide any of the data on which the analysis was based.”

Photo: screenshot LinkedIn page

Forensic anthropologist Botella spent six days analyzing the bones retrieved from Columbus’ tomb with laser scanners, concluding that the only certainty was that they belonged to the same man, someone between the ages of 50 and 70.

By the time of the exhumation in 2003, it was not possible to extract DNA from the bones, Botella explains, adding that he pulled out of the research, not wishing to participate further.

Meanwhile, population genetics expert Antonio Salas, explained his reservations to El País: “Only at the end [of the documentary] is it mentioned that the only thing recovered from the presumed remains of Christopher Columbus was a partial profile of the Y chromosome.”

Photo: screenshot from the documentary “Columbus DNA: The true origin.”

“The problem is that the Y chromosome represents only a tiny fraction of our DNA and our ancestry,” he said, adding, “There is no Y chromosome that can be uniquely defined as Sephardic-Jewish.”

Salas quoted the renowned geneticist Mark Jobling who put it like this: “The best answer to the question ‘Where did my ancestors live?’ would be ‘Everywhere’.”

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