Columbus punctures in bone

The first international investigation to verify the destination of their remains he/she doesn't hurtle even conclusive results

ARANTZA PRÁDANOS/MADRID

INVESTIGATION. Miguel Bottle, in the one Forensic Anthropological laboratory. / DISCOVERY CHANNEL

It to call you Columbus's paradox. Almost five centuries after their death who it was the discoverer for antonomasia he/she refuses to be discovered. As in life, the Admiral continues grasped to his mysteries in the tomb. The inquiries seculars on their enigmatic origin get entangled in Byzantine discussions - that if Genoese, mallorquín, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, nobleman, Jew...- that neither the most modern technical historiográficas has been able to elucidate, and the science state-of-the-art genetics neither is able to take to port a clear verdict on where Christopher Columbus remains rest.

After a long year of investigations, the team that José coordinates Antonio Lorente, world expert in DNA and director of the Laboratory of Investigation Genetics of the University of Granada, is «at the end of the first time of the party». The provisional result, one to zero. Translated the simile futbolístico means that «you cannot discard that the bones guarded in the cathedral of Seville is those of Columbus».

Although decepcionante for the wakened up world expectation, said for passive the result improves something. «With the results that we prepare, even partial and preliminary, we could already have discarded that the bones of Seville were those of Columbus», he/she specified. Lorente, one of the parents of the program PHOENIX of missing people's of the Civil Watch identification, investigator of remains of missing of the Chilean dictatorship and collaborator of the FBI, it presented the well-known data of the first phase of the project, picked up in Enigma Columbus, a documentary taken place by Discovery Channel. The work will be emitted all the one world the next one October 12, anniversary of the discovery of America, «with more questions than answers», Guillermo admits Sierra, responsible for production.

Discovery finances next to other producers an expensive investigation in the that six laboratories of the world are implied - the Universities of Granada, Santiago of Compostela and Barcelona, University Tor Vergara of Rome, the one Institute Max Planck of Leipzig, and the Orchid Company in Dallas, Texas-, specialists in DNA of first level, and even identification techniques genetics designed for the victims of the 11-S that now adapt to the study of bones with five centuries on the back.

Deterioration

Ballasted from the beginning for the deplorable state of the bony remains that you/they are believed of Columbus, scarce and deteriorated - «the worst in all the senses with those that me I have worked», Lorente complained -, they have not been able to isolate DNA mitocondrial of enough quality to compare it with that of their brother Diego on whose skeleton is not doubts of identity. The Texan laboratory, on the other hand, he/she still works with the remains of Hernando Columbus, son of the Admiral, for to identify the chromosome AND that is transmitted from father to son.

Up to now they know that the splinters guarded in the cathedral hispalense are of a male «of mediterranean origin, of medium and fairly robust size, without marks of bad degenerative and with a good bony calcification», it summarizes the professor Miguel Bottle, of the University of Granada.

The puzzle on Columbus's last habitation beaches in The Hispaniola, the island that the discoverer of the New World converted him. Saint's cathedral Domingo, in the current Dominican Republic claims Columbus's identity for some remains that it guards since in 1537 one of the navigator's daughter-in-laws it deposited their cadaver there in execution of their last will. Later and risky transfers have confused the rake of the bones.