Two exhumations in Spain seek to determine Columbus’s lineage once and for all
When Christopher Columbus died on May 20, 1506, he left behind him a historical legacy and a mystery about his true origins.
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The official theory has long defended that the navigator who reached America was from Genoa.
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In 1898, another hypothesis postulated that the explorer had been born in Pontevedra.
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Portugal, Croatia and Poland have also been mentioned as Columbus’s possible origins.
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Now, a project led by José Antonio Lorente, a professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Granada, is examining Columbus’s DNA.
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Historians are impatiently awaiting the results of the scientific study, which could change the last 500 years of history.
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After exhuming Columbus’s tomb in the Cathedral of Seville in 2003 and extracting remains of his bones, Lorente began the analysis for their genetic identification.
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Tracing Columbus’s lineage took Lorente’s team to the province of Pontevedra.
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Near the medieval San Xoán de Poio monastery, team members recovered possible vestiges of Columbus related to a clan of sailors in the 15th century.
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The researchers also opened a stone sarcophagus located in a church in the village of Vilaxoán.
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Historians believe that the sarcophagus contained the mummy of an influential clergyman who might have been Columbus’s cousin.
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To the team’s surprise, the remains were in apparently good condition after having been buried for five centuries.
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If the genetic tests match, Christopher Columbus could in fact be Pedro de Soutomaior, according to one hypothesis.
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The investigation’s final result will be the basis of a documentary film and a miniseries.