Was Columbus Jewish? (New DNA results, Spanish researchers)

[Archie]

The theory that Columbus was Jewish has been around for decades. I don't recall all of the arguments in favor of the Jew theory, but my understanding is that there were some circumstantial points in favor of it such as 1492 being the year Jews were expelled from Spain.

Study finds Christopher Columbus’s DNA ‘compatible’ with Sephardic Jewish origins: A new documentary explores 20 years of research into the navigator’s roots, suggesting his birthplace is in the ‘western Mediterranean’

https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024 ... igins.html

A study into the mysterious roots of Christopher Columbus — which began over 20 years ago — suggests that the explorer was of Sephardic Jewish origin, based on an analysis of his DNA. The documentary Colón ADN: Su verdadero origen (Columbus DNA: His True Origins), produced by Spanish broadcaster RTVE and Story Producciones, chronicles the two decades of research led by forensic scientist José Antonio Lorente, a professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Granada.

The study, conducted by Spain’s University of Granada, indicates that “the mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome of his son, Hernando Colón, contain traits compatible with Jewish ancestry.” The documentary — which includes insights from experts in history, genetics, and genealogy — suggests that Columbus’s genetic profile can be traced to the western Mediterranean, specifically “to Sefarad,” the Hebrew name for the Iberian Peninsula. According to the study, approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Spain during the Middle Ages, while the Republic of Genoa — the most widely accepted birthplace of the navigator — had no more than 15,000. In Sicily, about 40,000 Jews resided, but both groups were expelled in the 12th century, and those in Spain were expelled in 1492.

The investigation began in 2001 when historian Marcial Castro proposed to Lorente that they open the sailor’s tomb in Seville Cathedral to verify whether the remains inside indeed belonged to Columbus. DNA samples taken from the coffin were compared with those of his son Hernando — also buried in the cathedral — and his brother Diego, who is interred at the Cartuja monastery in Seville. The evidence confirmed that the bones belonged to Columbus. However, in 2005, despite positive results, the project was abandoned because DNA technology was not yet advanced enough, and a significant amount of bone material needed to be destroyed to reach definitive conclusions.

The investigation resumed in 2020 when advancements in genetic technology allowed for more conclusive results.

Additionally, the father-son relationship between Christopher Columbus and his son Hernando was fully confirmed.

Additionally, the discoverer of America never wrote in Italian or Genoese, nor did he use expressions from those languages. When he sent letters to Italy, he wrote them in Spanish.

Albardaner points out that all Italian historians who support the theory of Columbus’ Genoese origins “have written in black and white” that he was not Jewish. “The entire theory of Columbus being Genoese collapses if it is accepted that he was Jewish. This notion is untenable in Italy, as Jews were expelled from Genoa in the 12th century; there was no community, no people, no synagogue or anything left. They could only stay for three days before being forced to leave.”

Here's another article on it from Jerusalem Post.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-824309

Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506, but wished to be buried on the island of Hispaniola that is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

His remains were taken there in 1542, then moved to Cuba in 1795, and then – it had been long thought in Spain – to Seville in 1898.

Based on this backstory, there has to be some doubt about whether the remains in Seville are really Columbus. But if the DNA shows the "Columbus" remains are related to the "son's" remains that would strongly suggest the traditional identification is correct.

I am inclined to discount this slightly since the research was done for a TV special. If they are serious, they will publish papers with all the details so that genetic experts can give a proper critique.

[fireofice]

Columbus was not Jewish. It's all nonsense. The bones aren't even his.

https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-c ... bus-jewish

https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-m ... addressing

[Archie]

There's a Wikipedia article on this that gives some background.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_th ... r_Columbus

It seems the crypto Jew theories did not arise until relatively recently.

There are tons of articles online about the new documentary but none of them are giving any genetic details. Possibly his Y haplogroup is J (maybe J2), but I don't think that's official. Unless it is some really specific subclade, I don't think that would be enough to prove someone's Jewish. It seems they were careful to say "compatible" with him being Jewish.

https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogro ... -DNA.shtml

[TlsMS93]

If so, he apparently contributed to the introduction of syphilis into Europe.

https://www.dw.com/en/syphilis-did-chri ... a-71096335

[Scott]

I think the claim that Columbus was a crypto Jew is nonsense. A Genoese navigator who sailed for the powerful Spanish monarchy of Ferdinand and Isabella, the power-couple who expelled the Jews that same year, the very idea of him being Jewish beggars belief.

Jews have a tendency to try to claim historically-prominent people as their own.

Recently, for example, some Jewish historians have tried to float the thesis that Alexander Hamilton was a crypto Jew because he could not get into a private Christian school with his illegitimate parentage and once had a Jewish grade school teacher. Hamilton was also never a vocal anti-Semite.

In fact, it was Christians who took note of the young customs clerk Hamilton when he wrote a poem about a Caribbean hurricane that he witnessed, and he was brought to the United States to attend a New Jersey prep-school on a scholarship, and then King's College in New York City, now Columbia University.

During the Revolutionary War, Hamilton served as General Washington's aid as a Lieutenant Colonel and was afterwards admitted to the New York State bar. When he was killed in a duel with the Vice President in 1804, Hamilton was the leader of the Federalist Party and had advocated for his rival Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson over his fellow NY attorney, Major Aaron Burr whom he had deemed unscrupulous.

Col. Hamilton was an undying voice who convinced the "retired" General Washington to call for a Constitutional Convention to replace the Articles of Confederation, which was not cutting the mustard on basic things like interstate commerce, etc.

Each state was printing their own currency, Continental Currency was worthless, and some states had not even paid off or even defaulted on their Revolutionary War debts. Many acute problems like Slavery were just being kicked down the road by various state legislatures. Hamilton got his Philadelphia convention, and he supported a strong Bill of Rights, but was prophetic in that the Constitution that resulted was ultimately left too weak to prevent balkanization, which ultimately occurred in 1861 with hundreds of millions dead.

Since Hamilton practically invented modern banking in the United States, and almost single-handedly restored the full faith and credit of national currency during the Washington administration, a lot of "hard money" and (((Austrian School))) Libertarian types buy into the Alexander Hamilton must have been a Jew-banker thesis.

It is also untrue that Treasury Secretary Hamilton created a "debt-based money system." That theory is not supported from an actual reading of his major policy papers like the Reports on Public Credit and the Report on Manufactures.

Many edgy-podcaster types (without degrees in History I might add) might also think that the President of the Reichsbank Hjalmar Schacht, who restored the German economy in the early Nazi era was Jew-controlled tool.

Although Reichsbanker Schacht had plenty of plutocratic contacts globally, Hjalmar was not a Nazi and was ultimately fired by Hitler before the war because Schacht refused to see restoring German military strength without the gold reserves to fund it to be a national priority.

Hitler did think so, however, because no nation without a formidible military stregnth had any hope of diplomatic leverage whatsoever in the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations world where all nations were equal but some were decidedly more equal than others.

In fact, Schacht was tried before the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal after WWII as one of the major war criminals, essentially for repairing the German financial system and ending German unemployment long before the war.

While people were out of work in England and America in the 1930s, in Germany there was a labor shortage. However, Schacht was one of the few German defendants at Nuremberg that were actually acquitted, so it seems that the Victors may not have considered him to be a true Nazi after all.

I doubt if Christopher Columbus was circumcised. Alexander Hamilton certainly was not a tribesman either, and in fact he was more of a practicing Christian than rival Thomas Jefferson, who was a Deist.

Alexander Hamilton was one of the most Nationalist of the Founding Fathers and essentially penned President Washington's Farewell Address which counselled against foreign wars and entanglements, against vapid moral crusades, and against what John Quincy Adams later called "seeking monsters to deatroy."

General Hamilton is today buried at Trinity Church in Manhattan, at the Western End of Wall Street. The Right-wing philospher Francis Parker Yockey, who wrote Imperium after World War II, spoke exceptionally well of him.

Hamilton was made into the butt of a joke with the eponymous 2015 Broadway rap-musical which sought to portray the Founding Fathers as "woke" Coloreds and Gays. And your typical Zoomer probably would not even know any better.



What this all means is that within a few more generations of pop-culture Jewish histories ─ all citing each other incestuously, and using primary sources that are vague or hard to check ─ Hamilton the historical man and Founding Father, will wind up being Jewish, miscegenated, and Gay.

That is not real history and it's why the meticulous discipline of historiography is so important.