Christopher Columbus back home.
Spanish scientists said today in Madrid that they have confirmed that the remains of Christopher Columbus are buried in a crypt inside the cathedral of Seville, thus ending the debate of the Discoverer resting place.
It is possible that some of Columbus' remains also could have been left behind in the Dominican Republic, the report says, one day before of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' death in Valladolist Spain.
A forensic team led by Spanish geneticist Jose Antonio Lorente compared DNA from bones buried in a cathedral in Seville with DNA from remains known to be from Columbus' brother, Diego, who also is buried in the southern Spanish city, where they find absolute match up in the mitochondrial DNA, which proofs the identity of the bones. However, Juan Bautista Mieses, the director of the Columbus Lighthouse - a cross-shaped building several blocks long that the Dominican government built to house the explorer's remains - dismissed the researchers' findings. He insisted that Columbus is buried in the Dominican Republic.
"The remains have never left Dominican territory," Bautista said.
Spanish antropologists had tried in vain for years to persuade the Dominican Republic to open up the monument to compare the remains inside with those of Diego Columbus. But the Dominicans won't allow for such study, which puts in doubt the autenthicity of the remains since an independent research cannot be conducted or the genetic match confirmed.
"Now, studying the remains in the Dominican Republic is more necessary and exciting than ever,"the Spaniards say. Althought they are convinced that the bones in Seville are from Columbus, that does not necessarily mean the ones in Santo Domingo are not. Columbus' body was moved several times after his death, and the tomb in Santo Domingo might conceivably also hold part of the explorer's body.
2 Comments:
Very interesting. I saw a special once on Columbus and there are many theories about who he really was. One theory is that he was a Jew that obscured his heritage another is that he had actually previously fought against the Catholic Royals of Spain (I can't remember on whose side he had been fighting, it might have been Portugal). So he wanted to conceal his past as one of their opponents while trying to secure the financing for his voyage. The documentary claimed that it's almost certain that he wasn't from Genoa.
Columbus history is full of mystery. It is pretty much certain he WAS Jewish and due to the prejudices of the time not a well liked nor trusted Captain. Much of the knowledge that we have of him now a days seems to be a self made invention (even his real name has been put into question). I do not know about his fighting against the Spanish at any time I DO know he was NOT at all a sailor of any fame or trust in Europe.
There are a lot of factors that indicate that Columbus had full knowledge of the Americas from the North Pole to Tierra del Fuego , so his trip was not an “adventure” at all , although his dismal reputation as a sailor didn’t give anyone a reason to believe that funding an expedition for him was a sound investment.
Columbus never showed anyone what proof he indeed had of his knowledge but as history has it ( around El Escorial where he asked Isabel for the money) he showed the Queen a detailed (partial) map of the Americas drawn by himself and said to be copied from other maps he somehow had found.
MOST of the complete map was not shown to Isabella but what was shown gave her enough confidence to invest in the trip. It is said with her own jewelry BUT… again the rumors are that she showed the map to the king and the money actually came from the royal coffers, at this time pretty damn depleted .
One thing needed to be assured and it was that ALL lands discovered by Columbus would be property of Spain, and this could not be trusted to a “jew” so Columbus converted not only to Christianity but to Catholicism in a HURRY. Some say on the day he sailed off from Palos (which in fact WAS the name of the town from which Columbus sailed and NOT Palos de Moguer , which was founded in 1642)
Columbus never showed the whole map of the American continent (why show the whole hand if a couple of cards will do the trick?) and there he went!
About 9 years after the discovery of the Americas a captain of an Ottoman fleet (Kemal Reis) captured 7 Spanish ships off the coast of Spain. During the interrogation of the captured sailors they discovered one of the men HAD indeed sailed with Columbus and had in his position a map drown by Columbus himself and contained astonishing accuracy of detail. Considering that the first map that arrived in Spain of what was then the New World (which according to history Columbus never knew it was INDEED a new continent but … I DOUBT IT) , were not much that a few circles depicting a few islands and Cuba was not much than an elongated oval, this map they found on the Spanish sailor was intricately detailed , from North to South Pole and even showed the west coast of the Americas !
The map was considered a great find and was bequeathed to Kemal’s nephew Piri Reis who made it public knowledge 21 years after Columbus had “discovered” America. The thing was that 95% of the map contained land and features that were supposed to be unknown at the time. Piris Ris became a cartographer and using the Columbus map as a starting point drew an extremely accurate map of the world even showing Islands in the Pacific Ocean.!
So how Columbus got a map to the Americas with such detail is unknown, why he lied and claimed he was looking for a shorter route to India is kindda obvious, he probably thought THAT was the western coast of India or a close by land mass . Why he didn’t show the whole map to Isabella, is also obvious. He’d keep “discovering” new lands north and south and having fulfilled his commitment to the Spanish crown now he was open to sell anything he wanted to the highest bidder.
The Piris Ris map actually contained details found in 9 other maps, one dating back to Alexander the Great. One was Portuguese/Spanish. One Indian/ Chinese. So the source of 3 maps were disclosed but Piris Ris never revealed the source of the other 6 maps that completed his WORLD MAP in such accurate and detailed fashion.
So the fact that Columbus converted to Catholicism as an absolute requirement from the King of Spain (Isabella was a lot more lenient) is a well known fact.
How the hell he KNEW in fine detail there was a HUGE Mass of land on the other side of the Atlantic and that his ships would NOT fall off the edge of the world, well to that there are quite a lot of wacky theories.
BTW Spaniadrs of the time called EVERYONE not Spaniard Genoan. It was synonimous with foreigner. So therein raises the confussion.
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