October 14, 2024

Christopher Columbus was not Jewish

Junk science is also junk history

Modern Medieval

by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele

We don’t know much about Christopher Columbus’ origins because, like most people who become important, he wasn’t important until he was important. So we have little real evidence about the first few decades of his life, and because the historical impact of both his actual deeds and the mythologizing of his deeds are so significant, wild speculation about his past has been part of that mythologizing for centuries.

Italians still say he was from Genoa (likely!). Spaniards, many of whom celebrate him as a national hero, sometimes argue he was actually Spanish, from Galicia (seems possible, we guess?). But because his origins are murky, and because Jews were oppressed in late 15th-century Iberia and had to conceal their identity, there’s long been a myth that Columbus was actually Jewish.

Over the weekend, this myth resurfaced in a Spanish documentary. As announced by the BBC, “Famed explorer Christopher Columbus was likely Spanish and Jewish, according to a new genetic study!” Amazing, right? But dig a little and it quickly becomes clear that there’s no evidence here. And by that we mean not only no evidence that he was Jewish, but no evidence that there is actually a study.

We want to emphasize that as of this moment, there is no real evidence that Columbus was Jewish. There is only the following argument:

1) sometimes Jews had to conceal their origins

2) We don’t know Columbus’ true origins

3) So maybe he concealed them

4) And that means maybe he was Jewish.

This isn’t persuasive.

There’s a secondary argument that’s also made sometimes, this one even less persuasive, that if he was Jewish, then we need to understand his quest to “liberate” Jerusalem (which he talked about a lot) through claiming the wealth of the Indies was actually a Jewish mission and not a Christian one, because he was a crypto-Jew, and down the rabbit hole we go.

If you see people reacting to the news that Columbus was a Jew, please tell them that there is zero actual evidence that Columbus was a Jew.

Supposedly, this new Spanish documentary had uncovered new evidence though. So, to learn more, we jumped over to the Spanish newspaper, El Pais (in Spanish, but spot-checking the English translation seems accurate to David). There, Antonio Alonso, apparently Spain’s most badass forensic geneticist, says, “Colón ADN no muestra en ningún momento el ADN de Colón.” Or, in English “At no moment does Columbus’ DNA show Columbus’ DNA.”

Uh.

But it’s far more damning than that. The article goes on to say that:

• The remains that were tested may or may not be Columbus’ (and the remains of his relatives, against which they can be compared, may or may not be those of his relatives).

• The remains most likely are not in good condition to recover significant amounts of DNA.

• Every other research team that partnered with the guy who made the documentary (José Antonio Lorente) dropped out decades ago and refused significant comment.

• All the documentary evidence we have, including from Columbus, points to his origins being with wool merchants in Genoa.

• In the sample that was tested, there are genetic variants associated with Iberian Sephardic populations, but these variants are also associated with other populations (says Alonso). And even if they were Sephardic, they could still point to populations from Genoa. In addition, if Columbus’ ancestors had included some Sephardic Jews, that reveals absolutely zero about Columbus’ own identity.

• The tiny bit of “science” that the documentary reveals (claiming to have a tiny portion of Y-chromosome) isn’t credible. According to geneticist Antonio Salas, “The Y chromosome represents only a tiny fraction of our DNA and our ancestry [and] there is no Y chromosome that can be defined exclusively as a Sephardic Jew.”

This is a damning analysis.

But this didn’t stop the breathless reporting. Just as NBC in 2006 blasted that “DNA verifies Columbus’ remains in Spain,” [remains in Spain probably on the plain — yes yes, we hear it too] now we have the BBC article saying “likely Spanish and Jewish.” Or Reuters, “Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe, study finds” [Reminder: There is no study].

Sigh.

The coverage from The Guardian is better:

José Antonio Lorente, a forensic medical expert at the University of Granada who has led the research, said [translated from the documentary] … “We have very partial, but sufficient, DNA from Christopher Columbus,” he said. “We have DNA from his son Fernando Colón, and in both the Y [male] chromosome and mitochondrial DNA [transmitted by the mother] of Fernando there are traces compatible with a Jewish origin.”

But even here, “compatible” or “rasgos compatibles con su origen judío” is a weasel word; it says there’s no evidence that rules out the possibility. But the late medieval Western Mediterranean was a complicated space with fluid boundaries among populations over the centuries. People intermarried. People converted. People moved between places. “Compatible” proves nothing.

And that’s the takeaway - Lorente presents no data. He hasn’t submitted an academic study for peer review but promises to do so when everything is complete but if this is all he’s got, then his best case scenario would prove nothing. He conducts the documentary as a reality show, eliminating contestants (possible origins) until there’s only “secret Spanish Jew” left.

This is the kind of thing that gives, or should give, scientific engagement with history a bad name. The best work integrates humanistic and scientific modes of inquiry, drawing from diverse ways of knowing to build a more complete understanding of the past. But this kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense works as TV because there’s a whole media ecosystem that too often rushes to publish bad articles with worse headlines, leaving the more cautious outlets behind.

So, if you see people reacting to the news that Columbus was a Jew, please tell them that there is zero actual evidence that Columbus was a Jew.

Related articles of ours:

• On Spain’s complicated relationship with its history of murdering Jews

• On Roland’s sword and the eagerness of media outlets to write bad headlines about history

• And finally … Leonardo da Vinci was also not Jewish.

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