International Team to Study Columbus DNA to Determine His Origin

An international team of scientists gathering in Spain Wednesday will launch a project to determine once and for all where famed explorer Christopher Columbus came from by examining his DNA.

While Columbus has long been claimed by Italy, there is also speculation he may have been Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian or even Polish. There is little known about his early history, and the project is designed to settle the question. In 2003, a team from the Spanish University of Granada’s medical school established, through DNA research, that bones in a tomb in the cathedral of Seville were those of Columbus, settling a dispute with the Dominican Republic which claimed his body was buried there.   At that time DNA technology was not advanced enough to determine much else.  Breakthroughs in the technology since then, however, have made it possible to now roughly ascertain the area of person’s ancestry.