Scientists have solved the 500-year-old mystery surrounding Christopher Columbus’ final resting place.
The team spent 20 years conducting DNA analysis on human bones found buried in the Cathedral of Seville, Spain, confirming with “absolute certainty” that they belonged to the explorer who died in 1506.
For two decades they have been comparing the DNA extracted from the samples with that of relatives and descendants.
Columbus’ body was moved several times after his death, and some experts claimed he had been buried in the Dominican Republic, sparking a search to locate the navigator’s remains.
Scientists have been working to solve the 500-year-old mystery of where Christopher Columbus was buried.
Miguel Lorente, a forensic scientist who led the investigation, said this Thursday: “Today it has been possible to verify it with new technologies, so the previous partial theory that the remains of Seville belong to Christopher Columbus has been definitively confirmed.”
Many experts have believed that the tomb inside the cathedral has long housed the body of Columbus, but it was not until 2003 when Lorente and historian Marcial Castro obtained permission to open it, discovering that previously unknown bones were found inside.
At that time, DNA technology was not capable of “reading” a small amount of genetic material to provide accurate results.
The researchers used the remains of the explorer’s son, Hernando, and his brother Diego, who were also buried in the Seville Cathedral.
The relative’s bones were also much larger than the fragments found in Columbus’ burial.
Advances in DNA analysis could also reveal whether the explorer was Italian or not, which has also been debated among the scientific community.
Some are certain that he was born in Genoa, while others have suggested that he was born in Poland or Spain.
It is then speculated that the navigator was Scottish, Catalan or Jewish.
The researchers said their findings on Columbus’s ancestry will be announced in a documentary titled ‘Columbus DNA: The true origin’ on Spanish national broadcaster TVE on Saturday.
Lorente, briefing reporters about the investigation on Thursday, did not reveal the findings but said they had confirmed previous theories that the remains in Seville belonged to Columbus.
The nationality investigation had been complicated by a number of factors, including the large amount of data. But “the result is almost absolutely reliable,” said Lorente.
Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492 from the Spanish port of Palos, hoping to find a route to the legendary riches of Asia.
Along with three ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, Columbus and approximately 100 men embarked on the voyage that took them to the other side of the world… and far from their original destination.
On October 12, 1492, the ships made landfall in what are now the Bahamas, and later that month Columbus saw Cuba and thought it was mainland China.
And two months later, the ships landed in what Columbus thought might be Japan.
On the second voyage in 1493, Columbus intentionally sailed back to the New World and landed in Puerto Rico, where he enslaved many of the island’s native Taínos, some of whom were sent back to Spain.
Many Spaniards came over the next four years, resulting in the deaths of some seven million Taínos, 85 percent of the population.
Researchers obtained permission to open a tomb located in a Spanish cathedral in 2003, and found bone fragments from an unknown human. Now, the team confirmed that the remains are Columbus’s.
The arrival of Europeans also caused the spread of deadly diseases such as smallpox and measles, and many historians claim that Columbus also brought the first syphilis-like diseases to the Americas.
But a study in January found the disease was proliferating thousands of years earlier.
The first appearance of a syphilis epidemic was documented in the late 15th century in Europe, leading historians to believe that it reached the Americas when Columbus set foot on the continent.
DNA evidence has now revealed that treponematosis, an ancient syphilis-like disease, existed in Brazil more than 2,000 years before the explorer set sail for the new world.
Kerttu Majander, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel, said: “The fact that the findings represent an endemic type of treponemal diseases and not sexually transmitted syphilis, leaves the origin of sexually transmitted syphilis still unresolved.”
The team examined the bones of four people who died in the coastal region of Santa Catarina, Brazil, thousands of years ago.
Pathogens were found in the remains that showed signs of a syphilis-like disease that likely caused mouth sores and shin pains.
The study, published in Nature, states that the bones were excavated at the Jabuticabeira II archaeological site and have been studied since 2016.
The researchers examined 37 of 99 sequencing data samples and found that there were between seven and 133 positive results for diseases derived from the Treponema family.
Verena Schünemann, co-author of the study, says: “Although the origin of syphilis still leaves room for the imagination, at least we now know without a doubt that treponematoses were not foreign to the American inhabitants who lived and died centuries before the continent. “. It was explored by Europeans.