For hundreds of years, researchers have contemplated the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, calling into query the broadly accepted perception that the explorer hailed from Genoa, Italy, earlier than settling in Spain for the rest of his life. Many historians theorized that he might have been of Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Portuguese, and probably Jewish descent. In 2002, a staff of devoted researchers, led by forensic professional Miguel Lorente, started an exhausting decades-long investigation to pinpoint Christopher Columbus’s origins by testing tiny samples of stays buried in Seville Cathedral, the situation marked by authorities because the final resting place of the explorer, which has since been closely scrutinized.
