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DNA study confirms Christopher Columbus’s remains are entombed in Seville
- litoE 2y agoI'm confused. They have just now determined that they do indeed have Columbus's DNA so they can finally answer the question of where he was from. But all along they have had the DNA of his brother and of his son. Wouldn't their DNA have answered that question just as well?
- bbor 2y agoBecause this article is nationalist lies released on a dramatic TV show for Spain's "national day", not real science. Sorry! For some reason, people are still fighting to claim more credit for the guy who was condemned at the time for immoral behavior. Nationalists gonna nationalist, I guess. Specifically, they probably don't have Columbus' DNA, and if they do, it's from a very small collection of highly degraded hand bones: https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/7HHNA2XRENAIDKTSS4RUGIDTLY.jpeg?auth=83f08eecafe042e739a54e738f80d5b87d12739149d8d02dbc6a78148ec09a09&width=980 https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/7HHNA2XRENAIDKTSS4RUG... The bones that are supposedly from his brother are in similar condition, and also this guy "now claims that the alleged remains of Christopher and Diego do not correspond to those of two brothers, but to two second cousins." See my comment history or https://elpais.com/ciencia/2024-10-12/el-show-del-adn-de-cristobal-colon-pudo-ser-un-judio-de-valencia-o-no.html https://elpais.com/ciencia/2024-10-12/el-show-del-adn-de-cri... for more info.
- huhtenberg 2y agoHere's a better and cleaner source of the same news - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/11/dna-study-christopher-columbus-remains-seville-cathedral https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/11/dna-study-chri.... the-express.com page has 2 scroll-fulls of 3rd party garbage blocked by uBlock.
- mikestew 2y agoBoy howdy, you’re not kidding. Most of the page is huge swathes of white where the Pi-hole said, “nuh, uh”.
- muststopmyths 2y agoAlso “confirmed” in original vs “found” in the express link
- Waterluvian 2y agoThis is weird. This is twice now that a Guardian article will simply not scroll on my iPhone. I just cannot view the article. The page is just broken.
- timeon 2y agoI have this with whole Guardian site on macos Safari but works in ff.
- dang 2y agoOk, we've changed to that from https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/151431/christopher-columbus-remains-found-500-years-dna-analysis https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/151431/christoph.... Thanks!
- ls612 2y agoSurprising (but heartening) that in all that time the true remains weren't stolen and replaced with someone else's.
- atlas_hugged 2y ago[flagged]
- khaki54 2y agoGross. What's wrong with you?
- krapp 2y ago[flagged]
- khaki54 2y ago[flagged]
- atlas_hugged 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoSince you've continued to break the site guidelines egregiously and ignored our requests to stop, I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. (No, this has nothing to do with your views on Christopher Columbus or any other topic.)
- atlas_hugged 2y ago[dead]
- krapp 2y ago> Saying a bunch of deranged stuff with progressive buzzwords sprinkled in doesn't make it appropriate or correct. I mean, accusing me of being Nazi adjacent because I'm opposed to slavery seems deranged, but you do you.
- alephxyz 2y ago>The conclusion followed comparisons of DNA samples from the tomb with others taken from one of Columbus’s brothers, Diego, and his son Fernando. >The knottier question of the explorer’s precise origins will be revealed in Columbus DNA: His True Origin, a special TV programme shown on Saturday 12 October, the date when Spain celebrates its national day and commemorates Columbus’s arrival in the New World. So if we've had DNA samples of his brother what was stopping us from finding out his "precise origins" earlier?
- pvaldes 2y agoSome brothers can have different mothers or fathers. As the origins of Colon were unknown his real family relationships were also unknown. He toke a lot of measures to hide their identity including lying about it. The scientists did DNA tests to Italians with surname Colomb and discovered an unexpected amount of variability (Those people weren't related). It seems that Colomb (Pigeon?) was a surname applied on Italy for children without parents, so was shared by different people without a real genetic relationship. John "Snow" style. This means also that it was also the perfect surname that somebody wanting to hide their past would chose. This way he could just pretend that didn't knew about his family when interrogated by Kings and powerful people. Refusing to answer otherwise would be extremely dangerous.
- geiser 2y agoFirst news (in Spanish) about the results shown in the special TV programme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41823437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41823437
- yieldcrv 2y agothey really sat on this until his special US holiday weekend funny
- brindidrip 2y agoThe article spun off into an op-ed piece discrediting Columbus and his achievements. What a shame.
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- kykeonaut 2y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 2y agoIt's a shame what he did. Why do you seem to think it's such a shame that somebody wrote about those historical facts? You don't like history? What's a shame is that you want to rewrite it.
- belval 2y agoI read the journals of Colombus mostly as a result of reading comments like yours and wondering what I was missing that wasn't taught in school so to speak. At least in the Kantian sense, the guy was not really bad in that he didn't really intend to do much harm. His writing is very tied to bringing Christianity to Caribbean tribes, some of which were still actively practising cannibalism. He "scammed" them by trading glass beads for gold, but that still feels somewhat minor. I wonder if people don't sometime confuse him with Cortés (who was a true piece of work) and the later stage of Spanish colonisation which all happens several years after the death of Columbus.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> I read the journals of Colombus Perhaps not the most neutral source. > At least in the Kantian sense, the guy was not really bad in that he didn't really intend to do much harm. No, they just recognize him as someone whose torture and other cruelty and abuses as a colonial administrator were so severe and notorious that he got thrown in chains, dragged back to Spain, and stripped of titles for them, in late 15th century Spain, not exactly a model of moderation when it came to conversion of subject populations to Christianity or paragon of human rights more generally.
- Vivtek 2y ago"Today, traveling to the same Caribbean islands can be tricky, as anyone caught with contraband can face serious repercussions." That is a very odd take on the Caribbean, and it's the third paragraph in the article. I've seen text spinners, but this feels AI-driven. Surely a human couldn't be this inane.
- sml156 2y agoIts a link to other articles on the same site, nothing nefarious
- kelnos 2y agoIt just felt gratuitously weird. It was completely out of place given the purpose of the article. Either it served to support some beef the author has with that region, or just to find any excuse to link to another article on the site.
- pryelluw 2y agoYeah, traveling anywhere with contraband is dangerous. Why single out the Caribbean?
- MichaelZuo 2y agoLLMs have gotten good enough that it’s practically impossible to tell apart the difference in output between a real human mid-wit writer and LLM output, especially if it has gone through some editing. So it’s probably best to err on the side of caution.
- dang 2y ago(the submitted URL has since been changed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41831356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41831356)
- ywvcbk 2y agoSeems like a nonsensical click-bait title. They found his remains by confirming that they are indeed buried in the tomb with his name on it?
- CSMastermind 2y agoIf you read the Gaurdian article that someone linked the confirmation was needed because his remains were transported under some secrecy multiple times. Originally he was buried in Hispaniola where today is the city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Motivated by fear of their destruction, they were moved to Cuba in 1795 under secrecy when France took over the island following several revolts. When Spain lost the Spanish-American war and ceded Cuba in 1898 they were then transported to Seville. Various conspiracy theories arose that the remains were never truly moved out of Santo Domingo, fueled by the fact that the remains in Seville were only partial and hand bones were found in a box in Santo Domingo with an inscription claiming they belonged to Columbus. The researchers note that the hand bones could also be authentic with his remains split between Spain and the Dominican Republic.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ywvcbk 2y agoYes, I knew all that. "Found" is still the the wrong word to use.
- bbor 2y agoI have a comment on the spanish-language version of this article so check my history for the juicy deets, but long story short: I'd bet my shorts that this is nationalist BS based on extremely shaky--not to mention unpublished!--science. See https://elpais.com/ciencia/2024-10-12/el-show-del-adn-de-cristobal-colon-pudo-ser-un-ju https://elpais.com/ciencia/2024-10-12/el-show-del-adn-de-cri...
- Qem 2y agoAround 20 generations passed since Columbus set foot in Americas. Given we have his DNA, I wonder if it's still possible to pinpoint living descendants if any exists.
- columbus567 2y agoI don't think it is possible - the autosomes recombine quite quickly, after 20 generations I think all the IBDs would be wiped away. But I might be wrong.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoGenetic contributions from any individual ancestor outside the direct maternal line quickly becomes almost indistinguishable once you get more than a few generations out. Centuries out like Columbus is, it's entirely possible for him to have contributed 0 base pairs to any of his descendants. Some of Columbus' descendants still hold noble titles though, like the Duke of Veragua: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crist%C3%B3bal_Col%C3%B3n_de_Carvajal,_18th_Duke_of_Veragua https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crist%C3%B3bal_Col%C3%B3n_de...
- pvaldes 2y agoHe had no past, but after discovering America, his family bloodlines were annotated in historical reports.