Columbus was probably Spanish and Jewish, DNA study suggests

A 20-year genetic investigation of the remains of Christopher Columbus has turned conventional historical wisdom on its head by concluding that the explorer whose voyage to the New World changed the course of global history may have been a Spanish Jew rather than a son of Genoa.

- Sam Jones Madrid Nadeem Badshah

The claim raises the prospect that the man who played a central part in the creation of Spain's mighty empire hailed from the very community that his patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, had expelled from their kingdom in the same year Columbus reached the Americas.

The findings were announced on Saturday night during a programme shown on the national broadcaster, RTVE, to coincide with Spain's national day, which commemorates Columbus's arrival in the New World on 12 October 1492.

José Antonio Lorente, a forensic medical expert at the University of Granada who led the research, said his analysis had revealed that Columbus's DNA was “compatible” with a Jewish origin.

He said: “We have very partial, but sufficient, DNA from Christopher Columbus. We have DNA from his son Fernando Colón, and in both the Y [male] chromosome and mitochondrial DNA [transmitted by the mother] of Fernando there are traces compatible with a Jewish origin.”

While Lorente acknowledged that he had not been able to pinpoint Columbus's place of birth, he said the likelihood was that he had come from the Spanish Mediterranean region.

“The DNA indicates that Christopher Columbus's origin lay in the western Mediterranean,” said the researcher. “If there weren't Jews in Genoa in the 15th century, the likelihood that he was from there is minimal. Neither was there a big Jewish presence in the rest of the Italian peninsula, which makes things very tenuous.”

Given that there were no solid theories nor clear indications that Columbus could have been French, Lorente added, the search area narrowed still further.