On February 22, 1498, a weather-beaten Christopher Columbus in his 40s decided in writing that his estate in the Italian port city of Genoa would be reserved for his family “because I came from there and was born in it”.
While most historians believe the document is a simple record of the famous explorer’s birthplace, some question its authenticity and wonder if there is more to the story.
Last year, findings from a decades-long investigation led by Jose Antonio Llorente, a forensic scientist at the University of Granada in Spain, bolstered the idea that Columbus might not have been of Italian descent at all, but was actually born somewhere in Spain to parents of Jewish ancestry.
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The revelation was announced in October 2024 as part of a special program broadcast in Spain to celebrate Columbus’ arrival in the New World on October 12, 1492.
Watch a summary of the findings below:
It is important to remember that science in the media should be viewed with caution, especially when there are no peer-reviewed publications available for rigorous scrutiny.
“Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can’t really assess what is in the documentary because they did not provide any analytical data,” Antonio Alonso, former director of Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Medicine, told Spanish news agency Manuel Ansed and Nuno Dominguez.
“My conclusion is that the documentary never showed Columbus’ DNA and as scientists we have no idea what analyzes were performed.”
Nonetheless, historical documents are increasingly challenged and supported by forensic analysis of biological records, raising the possibility that Columbus’s own DNA might shed light on his family history.
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The man known to much of the Western world by his anglicized name Christopher Columbus was born Cristoforo Colombo, according to interpretations of records written when he was an adult.
He was born in Genoa, the prosperous capital of the Liguria region in northwestern Italy, from late August to late October 1451.
It was not until later in life, as a young man in his twenties, that he headed west to Lisbon, Portugal, in search of wealthy patrons who might finance his daring attempt to “cut a shortcut” to the East and go in another direction entirely.
Although most historians accept that his birthplace in Genoa in court documents is true, speculation about an alternative heritage has existed for decades.
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A persistent rumor holds that Columbus was secretly Jewish, born in Spain at a time when Spain was suffering from severe religious persecution and ethnic cleansing.
Supporters of this claim cite strange anomalies in his will and explanations of the grammar of his letters.
Now, his own genes appear to provide new evidence.
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Llorente and his research team claimed in the TV special that their analysis of the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA extracted from the remains of Columbus’ son Ferdinand and brother Diego were consistent with Spanish or Sephardic Jewish ancestry.
Of course, this does not absolutely rule out Genoa, nor can it be certain that any place in Europe was the birthplace of the explorer.
In fact, at the end of the 15th century, just as Columbus was making his landmark voyage, Jews were being exiled from Spain and flocking to Italian cities to seek refuge, although few succeeded.
But any merit in Lorente’s discovery would make Columbus’s Italian ancestry harder to support, raising questions about how someone of Sephardic Jewish ancestry could have been born in Genoa in the 1450s.
In order for the findings to be widely adopted, the results need to be carefully scrutinized, if not convincingly replicated in detail.
Even so, one man’s story is more important than genetics—how a man from a persecuted minority truly represented the vanguard of Spanish expansion remains up in the air.
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For now, the story of Columbus remains that of an Italian sailor who caught the attention of Spanish royalty and was praised and scorned for the mark he inadvertently left on history, far from his native Genoa, the “noble and powerful seaside city.”
An earlier version of this article was published in October 2024.
