New DNA analysis could reveal major surprise over Christopher Columbus' true heritage

In 1498, six years after Christopher Columbus made his faithful crossing of the Atlantic from Europe to the Americas, the explorer now in his 40s wrote in his wrote that his estate in Genoa, Italy would be maintained for his family because “because from it I came and in it I was born".

Most historians through the centuries have thought of Genoa as the confirmed birthplace of the explorer, while some have questioned the forgone conclusion.

Forensic scientist José Antonio Lorente from the University of Granada in Spain wanted answers to this predicament and launched a decade long investigation in search of Columbus’ true heritage.

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Lorente now supports the claim that Columbus was actually born in Spain, to parents of Jewish ancestry. The claim was first reported during a television broadcast in Spain during to celebrate Columbus’ arrival in the Americas on Oct. 12, 1492.

However scientists are wary of these claims as the broadcast did not provide the data behind the claims they were making.

"Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can't really evaluate what was in the documentary because they offered no data from the analysis whatsoever," former director of Spain's National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences, Antonio Alonso, told Manuel Ansede and Nuño Domínguez at the Spanish news service, El País .

"My conclusion is that the documentary never shows Columbus's DNA and, as scientists, we don't know what analysis was undertaken."

Nonetheless forensic scientists and historians continue to analyze historical documents regarding Columbus’ heritage and his own DNA may provide insight into his family history.

Based on analysis of records Columbus wrote when he was an adult, his actually name was Cristoforo Columbo and he was born sometime between August and October of 1451 in Genoa, the capital of the northwestern Italian region of Liguria.

Speculation of an alternative birthplace has been floated for decades among historians and forensic scientists.

Lorente and his team of forensic scientists claim that an analysis of the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA taken from the remains of Columbus’ son are comparable to someone of Spanish or Sephardic Jewish heritage.

This doesn’t rule out Genoa as the place of Columbus’ birth, rather it begs the question how did someone of Spanish or Sephardic Jewish heritage wind up in Italy?

But for these findings to hold any weight they’d have to be successful replicated by other forensic scientists and the original results brought under strict scrutiny.

For now Italy can claim the first European to set foot in the Americas as their own.