Colón’s genetic study forces the exhumation of twenty bodies | Culture

It is a great paradox. The eight historians participating in the research project Colon DNA. Your true identity They start from the same material proofs and the same characters; however, their results are diametrically opposed. The only solution will therefore be to place them under the microscope of science. To avoid mistakes, scientists had to wait almost 18 years for the required technology to become available, since they started in 2003 when they were not as developed. It was historian Marcial Castro who lit the fuse when he asked José Antonio Lorente, professor of forensic and forensic medicine at the University of Granada and one of the world’s most renowned DNA experts, if “genetics could determine where Columbus was born. “. He replied: “Now, no, but in a few years …”. And these have passed. The genetic analysis of the Lorente team will include, among others, the child Don Pedro, a six-year-old boy who died in 1366; Portuguese Princess Leonor de Avís, members of the Trastamara dynasty; Aldonza de Mendoza, Duchess of Arjona; descendants of the Portuguese Atayde family; Juan Fernández de Sotomayor, bishop of Tuy, died in 1423; possible parents Navarre who would carry a specific antigen… Thus, to add more than twenty people who could be linked to the browser. The figure could increase as some exhumation permits are pending.

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To understand this story, with surrealist accents at its beginnings, we have to go back to 1950, when the crypt of the Sevillian convent of La Cartuja was opened – in those years already converted into a Pickman ceramics factory – and the remains of Diego Colón were found., Brother of the admiral. Nobody knows what to do with them, so they put them in a zinc urn and it starts to go around the industrial premises. They end up serving as a step – “inside which there was something ringing,” the workers remember – for an employee to access the highest shelves. Finally, someone reveals the truth, the woman has a panic attack, and the workers decide to bury the bones in the garden.

Spain and the Dominican Republic have always disputed ownership of the bones of Columbus. For the Dominicans, his remains rest in Santo Domingo and for the Spaniards in Seville. The owner of the La Cartuja plant, Carlos Pickam, has always maintained that both sides were right, as the body had been divided. So in 1959, Yale University (United States) asked Caribbean dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo for permission to examine the Dominican urn. He granted it, but when he opened it he found that it was sealed with a crystal. Since they were not allowed to break it, they x-rayed the bone elements that could move the box.

In 2003, Castro and Lorente obtained the permits to open the tomb of Columbus in Seville. A locksmith forced open the padlock – none of the cathedral keys worked – and they found a scramble of small pieces of bone mixed with dirt, as the corpse had been spinning for centuries. From Valladolid to Seville, from there to Santo Domingo until 1793, then to Cuba until 1898 and a year later to the Andalusian capital.

By comparing the Sevillian bones with X-rays from Yale in 2005, Spanish forensics determined that five coincided, so they were two different individuals: no one can have two sacred.

The technology of 2005 allowed, yes, to conclude that the bones of the tomb of Columbus, those of his son Hernando, also buried in the cathedral, and those of the lodge of La Cartuja ―for retired workers, it was difficult to remember where they buried him – they matched three genetically related people: Cristóbal, Diego and Hernando Colón. But it was impossible to go further. In addition, each investigation involved the destruction of many grams of bone, which is no longer necessary, since 0.1 nanogram currently allows very precise results to be obtained. The program has been frozen.

In 2021, the project resumed by creating a scientific and historical working group. The help of eight historians has been requested for the latter. Italian specialists – “obviously” – did not want to defend their widely held theory that he was Genoese. However, other historians are asking this question. “If he was Genoese, why did he never write a word in his so-called mother tongue?” “Only those who do not accept what appears in old books as good advanced science,” Lorente emphasizes.

The Portuguese José and Antonio Mattos, for example, argue that the sailor was the bastard son of Leonor de Avís, Princess of Portugal. His hypothesis, in the broad sense, is that the aristocrat hid his birth in order to be able to marry Emperor Maximilian, so that all his life dragged the pain. In all the paintings where he appears, his dresses bear an open pomegranate, a symbol of this misfortune.

The most radical is Francesc Albadanar i Llorenses, from the Catalan Society for Historical Studies. “If DNA tests don’t prove he was Jewish, my theory is worthless.” This historian “for whom neither Carlos V, nor Felipe II, nor Felipe III were kings of Spain,” but was a conglomerate of different kingdoms “- maintains that Columbus was” a foreigner in Castile, because he was a subject of the Catalan crown. Aragonese ”. He claims that in 2006 a computer program showed that to express itself, the browser “understands Catalan” and that it “uses Catalan Gothic letters”. However, his latest findings led him to believe he was from Valencia.

Sick of dyslalia

The Associate Professor of the Faculty of Geography of the Universidad Complutense Alfonso C. Sanz Núñez believes that Colón “is not that he was not Spanish, but that he suffered from dyslalia, a pronunciation disorder that made him so. appear foreign “. His hypothesis is that his name was Christopher Columbus Terra-Rubea, a point on which several experts agree. And “rubea” in Latin is thorn, that is to say from the land of thorns, which would mean that it was originally from Espinosa de Henares (Guadalajara). Several relatives of the discoverer, according to the specialist, had the surname Espinosa. Additionally, since the Navigator signed S / SAS / XMY, his signature can be interpreted as “I am Aldonza Mendoza’s successor. Cristóbal Mendoza me ”. Mendoza’s body is kept in Cogolludo (Guadajara), along with those of his son, in theory Colón.

Another hypothesis is that of Eduardo Esteban Muruéndano, president of the Association Cristóbal Colón Galego, who emphasizes toponymy, language and existing documentary evidence. The Galician theory, which began at the beginning of the 20th century, highlights the coincidence of 45 American toponyms with those of the Pontevedra estuary. He believes the sailor was related to the Galician family Fernández Sotomayor, of which a bishop of Tuy was a member. The body of religious will be among those exhumed.

The Mallorcan thesis, supported by Gabriel Verd Martorell, president of the Cristóbal Colón Cultural Association, is that he was the natural son of the Prince of Viana, brother of Fernando el Catolico, and of the Mallorcan Margalida Colom. He was born in Felanitx (Mallorca) in 1460. One of the proofs of his Balearic origin is that he wrote “almirant” and not “almirall”, as one does in Catalan.

As Columbus wrote, “I am not the first admiral in my family”. Fernando Branco, professor at the University of Lisbon, concluded that he was a Portuguese privateer by the name of Pedro Atayde. And, according to him, this person is nothing more than a transcription of Columbus himself. That he signed with the surname Terra Rubra only confirms his origin in Coimbra (Portugal), where Mount Rubeo is located.

Doctor José María Ercilla presents the most disparate hypothesis, but the easiest to verify. Columbus was an Agote – a minority in northern Navarre – and therefore carried the HLA-B27 chromosome. Ercilla shows more than 100 Basque toponyms in America and that the 10 people closest to the discoverer were always Basque-Navarre. He resolves the surname Terra-Rubra by remembering that Ainza, the supposed hometown, is in the region of Baigorri, which in Basque means red earth.

Professor Lorente insists on the fact that all the DNA will be verified – with the exception of that of the parents of the discoverer, because it does not exist -, in addition to trying to determine its origin directly through the mutations that the human group to which he belonged has been able to endure for centuries. This analysis system will undergo a double check. The remains of the discoverer, and soon of his hypothetical parents, have already been transported to the laboratories of the University of Granada, Florence and Texas. Analyzes will be confirmed in Mexico and Rome.

The results will be made public on October 12 in a documentary produced by RTVE and Story Producciones. The final answer will be a real discovery.