Although the most accepted theory is that Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa , the truth is that the origin of the admiral is still a matter of controversy and historians cannot agree. However, the advancement of genetic research techniques opens a new door to try to elucidate the origin of the discoverer of America: in 2003 his remains were exhumed from the sepulcher of the Cathedral of Seville and kept at the University of Granada and now a A multidisciplinary and international team of scientists is analyzing his DNA, as well as that of the remains attributed to his son Hernando and his brother Diego.
The project, led by the professor of Legal and Forensic Medicine at the University of Granada José Antonio Lorente, is not without complications: we are talking about 500-year-old remains that have also been transferred on several occasions. The body of the navigator, who died at the age of 55 due to a heart problem, was buried in a church in Valladolid in 1506. Three years later, his remains were transferred to the crypt of a monastery in Seville. Those of her legitimate son, Diego, were taken to the same place 17 years later. And sometime in 1544, both bodies were sent to Santo Domingo following the admiral’s wishes. In 1795, the colonialists took the remains to Havana. In 1898, when Spanish power in Cuba was crumbling, the bones were dug up again and carried across the Atlantic, to Seville.
A very valuable material
“In 2005 – when the exhumation of the remains of Columbus was finished – the appropriate technology was already available to identify genetic material of more than 500 years, but there were several problems, mainly related to the amount of sample that we could take and with the quality of it, the state of degradation was much greater than we expected “, Lorente explained in a press conference.” There was a moment when we realized that we were spending many grams of bone to obtain a lot of information. We wanted to reach a conclusion as soon as possible, but we realized that we could not waste such a valuable and invaluable sample. We decided to stop the investigation and wait for the techniques to improve enough to allow us to move forward. “
“Currently, the technology available is much more precise: it has increased the extraction capacity of bone and dental material, and it is more sensitive, it can give us more information based on very little DNA,” explained the expert. .
In the analysis of the samples, five laboratories from various countries will be involved: three will work in isolation and independently, without communication between them, which will allow more reliable conclusions to be drawn, and the remaining two will work as support for the former.
” Our mission is to try to extract as much information as possible so that historians and experts can interpret it, ” Lorente recalls. “It is not we as geneticists who have to do it.” The path of this investigation will be documented and recorded in a documentary film co-produced by TVE and Story Producciones.
Lorente is a pioneer researcher in applying DNA techniques in the forensic field and also leads a project that we have echoed several times in Very Interesting: DNA Prokids, which uses genetic identification to fight human trafficking, especially of boys and girls.
