What is the science behind the Christopher Columbus origins discovery?
Al Jazeera
A Spanish documentary has used DNA to make history-changing claims, but the science behind its conclusions remains unclear.
A documentary aired on Spain’s national television this month has made headlines around the world for its revolutionary claim that Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from the Iberian Peninsula, contrary to the widely accepted theory that he hailed from Genoa in Italy.
A team of forensic experts led by the University of Granada used DNA analysis to investigate the background of the 15th-century explorer in a bid to lay to rest a longstanding debate on the origins of the man whose expeditions opened the way for Europeans to colonise the Americas.
While the scientific method behind the findings has yet to be made public, the history-changing claims contained in the documentary Columbus DNA: His True Origins have brought to the forefront how DNA may hold the key to the unsolved mysteries of the past.
Archaeogenetics is the study of ancient DNA, or DNA that is more than 70 years old.
Rodrigo Barquera, a researcher in archeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, explained that genetic material is collected from human archaeological samples and then purified and sequenced before being examined.
