On February 22, 1498, Christopher Columbus, a wealthy man in his mid-forties, ordered in writing that his estate in the Italian port city of Genoa should be preserved for his family “because I descended from there and was born there.”

Although most historians consider the document to be a clear record of the famed explorer’s birthplace, some have questioned its authenticity and wondered if there is more to the story.

A decades-long investigation led by forensic scientist José Antonio Lorente of the University of Granada in Spain has now supported the claim that Columbus may not have been of Italian descent after all, but was actually born somewhere in Spain to Jewish parents.

The revelation was announced as part of a special broadcast in Spain celebrating Columbus’ arrival in the New World on October 12, 1492.

It is important to remember that academic work in the media should be viewed with caution, especially when there is no peer-reviewed publication to critically examine.

“Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we cannot really assess what was contained in the documentation, since no data from the analysis was available,” Antonio Alonso, former director of the Spanish National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences, told Manuel Ansede and Nuño Domínguez at the Spanish news service El País.

“My conclusion is that the documentary never shows Columbus’ DNA and we as scientists don’t know what analysis was done.”

Still, historical documents are increasingly being challenged – and corroborated – by forensic analyzes of biological records, raising the possibility that Columbus’s own DNA could potentially provide insight into his family history.

Based on interpretations of records written as an adult, the man known throughout much of the Western world by the anglicized name Christopher Columbus was born as Cristoforo sometime between late August and late October 1451 in Genoa, the bustling capital of northwestern Italy Columbo was born in the Liguria region.

It was only later in his life, as a young man in his twenties, that he traveled west to Lisbon, Portugal, in search of wealthy patrons who would support his bold attempt to take a “shortcut” east and head in the completely opposite direction , could finance .

Although most historians accept the court documents proving his birthplace in Genoa as true, speculation about an alternative heritage has existed for decades.

A persistent rumor claims that Columbus was secretly Jewish, born in Spain at a time of intense religious persecution and ethnic cleansing. Proponents of the claim cite strange anomalies in his will and interpretations of the syntax in his letters.

Now it looks like his own genes may provide new evidence.

Lorente and his team of researchers claimed in the television special that their analysis of the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA from the remains of Columbus’ son Ferdinand and his brother Diego was consistent with a Spanish or Sephardic Jewish heritage.

Of course, this does not categorically rule out Genoa and does not specify any place in Europe as the explorer’s birthplace. In fact, Jews were exiled from Spain in the late 15th century, just as Columbus embarked on his groundbreaking voyage, and flocked to the Italian city to seek asylum, but to no avail.

But if Lorente’s findings had any value, it would make it a little more difficult to prove Columbus’ Italian origins, raising the question of how someone of Sephardic Jewish origin could have been born in Genoa in the 1450s.

In order for the results to be widely accepted, the results would need to be carefully examined if they could not be convincingly reproduced in detail.

Even then, there is more to an individual’s story than just genetics – and it remains unclear how an individual from a persecuted minority truly became the spearhead of Spanish expansion.

For now, the story of Columbus remains the story of an Italian sailor who caught the attention of the Spanish royal family and who was both celebrated and despised for the mark he unintentionally left on history far from this “noble and powerful city by the sea.” . his hometown Genoa.