Identification of Christopher Columbus's remains
The identification of Christopher Columbus's remains has been a contentious issue between the cities of Seville, Spain, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, since the early 2000s. Columbus, who died in 1506, was buried in Valladolid, Spain, but his remains have been relocated multiple times over the centuries. His son Diego initially moved his body to Seville, and subsequent transfers led to claims from both Seville and Santo Domingo regarding the authenticity of the remains they hold. In 2002, DNA analysis began on the remains in Seville, aiming to clarify their origin. However, efforts faced challenges, particularly when the Dominican Republic denied permission for testing on their claimed remains, citing religious reasons. In 2006, researchers announced that they matched mitochondrial DNA from the Seville remains with that of Columbus's brother, suggesting a connection to Columbus. Nonetheless, ongoing disputes and unanswered questions have left the definitive resting place of Columbus shrouded in uncertainty, fueling national pride and impacting tourism in both regions.
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Identification of Christopher Columbus's remains
DATE: Began in 2002
THE EVENT: The cities of Seville, Spain, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, have long debated which of them is the resting place of the authentic remains of Christopher Columbus. Modern DNA analysis techniques have been put to use in the examination of the remains in Seville, but efforts to settle the issue conclusively remained unsuccessful because the Dominican Republic refused to allow the remains in its possession to be tested.
SIGNIFICANCE: The use of DNA analysis to test the remains held in Seville that were reputed to be those of Columbus brought international attention to the use of such techniques for the positive identification of individuals. For the countries involved in the debate over Columbus’s burial site, national and regional pride are at stake, but tourism and other financial benefits are also major factors.
Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 and died on May 20, 1506, at age fifty-five. He died from a variety of ailments and exhaustion in Valladolid, Spain, while pursuing a successful effort to secure financial benefits for his heirs from King Ferdinand II. He was buried in Valladolid, his temporary residence. Although Columbus died surrounded by his close loved ones, the death of the great explorer went almost unnoticed in Spain.
A few years after Columbus died, one of his sons, Diego, had his body transferred to the Carthusian monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, near Seville, more than three hundred miles from Valladolid, where Columbus had rested for months after returning from his fourth voyage in 1504. In 1526, the bones of his son Diego were also buried there. Christopher Columbus had asked to be buried in Santo Domingo, his favorite island, and in 1537, his and Diego’s remains were transferred to Santo Domingo, to a temporary location and then to the cathedral. In 1796, to avoid French control when Hispaniola was ceded to France, the Spanish government had Columbus’s body moved again, this time to Havana, Cuba. When Spain lost Cuba to independence in 1898, Columbus’s body was again transferred, this time to the Cathedral of Seville.
Meanwhile, in 1877, during renovation of the cathedral in Santo Domingo, a lead box had been found that was inscribed with Columbus’s name; the box contained thirteen large and twenty-eight small bone fragments. Despite questions about the location of the lead box, Santo Domingo claimed that the wrong remains (perhaps those of Columbus’s son Diego) had been sent to Havana, and that it had the true remains of Columbus.
In 2002, Marcial Castro, a historian and teacher from the Seville area, began a project that would perform (deoxyribonucleic acid) analysis on the reputed Columbus remains held at the Cathedral of Seville. José Antonio Lorente, a forensic geneticist who had worked on criminal cases and had helped to identify the bodies of victims of brutal Latin American regimes of the 1970s, was enlisted as the leader of a team of genetic experts. By June 2003, the researchers had obtained fragments of the remains believed to be those of Christopher Columbus as well as fragments from known relatives of Columbus: his son Hernando and his brother Diego, both of whom had been buried in Seville. Comparison of the Y (male) chromosomes of the remains attributed to Columbus and those of Hernando proved impossible because of deteriorated conditions.
In January 2005, the researchers gained permission to view the purported Columbus remains in Santo Domingo, but Dominican authorities then withdrew permission and refused to allow any attempt to extract DNA from the bones, citing religious objections. In May 2006, the researchers announced that they had matched the mitochondrial (maternally inherited) DNA of the remains in Seville claimed to be those of Columbus with the mitochondrial DNA of Columbus’s brother Diego, proving that Columbus, or at least some of his remains, was buried in Seville. Despite this evidence, some controversy about the true burial site of Christopher Columbus remained because Santo Domingo refused to allow testing on the remains in its possession. Scientists have speculated that it is possible some of Columbus’s remains were interred in the Dominican Republic.
Bibliography
Dugard, Martin. The Last Voyage of Columbus. Little, Brown, 2005.
Wilford, John Noble. The Mysterious History of Columbus: An Exploration of the Man, the Myth, the Legacy. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.
Sood, Suemedha. "The Mystery of Christopher Columbus’s Legacy." BBC, 8 Nov. 2012, www.bbc.com/travel/article/20121107-the-mystery-of-christopher-columbuss-legacy. Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.