Happy Columbus Day

Columbus Day, of course, celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America. It is annually on the second Monday of October.

    Columbus went ashore at Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas, on October 12, 1492 (under the Julian calendar at use at the time, but October 21 under the Gregorian calendar). Columbus Day was first celebrated on October 12, 1792, by the New York Society of Tammany and became a national holiday in 1892. It is also the only holiday that celebrates Italian-Americans. 

    It is not without its controversy. For instance, many liberals bemoan the fact that Columbus introduced Christianity to the Western Hemisphere, ultimately replacing the native religions. The would rather call it "Indigenous Peoples Day" as they fantasize about what the world would be like without Christian European peoples. But Thomas Hobbs already described what such a world would be: "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

(H/t Instapundit)

    But it seems that some researchers not only deny that Columbus was Italian, but that he was a Christian: The Telegraph reports on the latest: "Christopher Columbus was secretly Jewish". The article reports:

    The discovery was the culmination of two decades of investigation led by Antonio Lorente, professor of legal and forensic medicine at the University of Granada.

    It was presented in a prime-time Spanish television documentary on Saturday night to coincide with Spain’s national day.

    “Both in the ‘Y’ chromosome and in the mitochondrial chromosome of Hernando, there are traits compatible with Jewish origins,” Prof Lorente declared.

"Traits compatible with Jewish origins" doesn't sound definitive to me. Continuing:

    He said the DNA showed a “western Mediterranean” origin, but he could not state categorically which country or region.

Nicely vague. Continuing:

    Francesc Albardaner, a historian who has written extensively about Columbus having origins in Catalan-speaking eastern Spain, explained that being Jewish and from Genoa was effectively impossible in the 15th century.

    “Jews could only spend three days at a time in Genoa by law at that time,” said Mr Albardaner.

    Mr Albardaner said his research has shown that Columbus was from a family of Jewish silk spinners from the Valencia region.

This despite the plethora of documentary evidence, outlined later in the article, that links Columbus to Genoa. But back to the Telegraph Article and Mr. Albardaner:

    “Christopher Columbus had to pretend all his life that he was a Roman Catholic Christian. If he had made one mistake, this man would have ended up on the pyre,” said Mr Albardaner.

But the argument that genetics makes one Jewish is somewhat of a two-edged sword: one of the reasons given for why Karl Marx shouldn't be considered Jewish is that his father had converted to Christianity before Marx was born. In that vein, from the Jewish News Service: 

    “The recent DNA evidence regarding Columbus is very interesting and helps to illuminate his biography and the era in which he lived. I would offer one caveat, though: While it indicates that Columbus had Jewish heritage, it does not indicate that Columbus was a professing, Jew,” said Jonathan Ray, professor of Jewish studies at Georgetown University.

    According to Ray, who is the author of the 2023 book Jewish Life in Medieval Spain: A New History, there is no proof that Columbus (1451-1506) lived a Jewish life, “nor even as a crypto-Jew,” and the historical record indicates he was Catholic.

And from the same article:

    Andrew Koss, a historian and senior editor at Mosaic magazine, wrote that “I highly doubt the study ‘proves’ anything.”

    “I don’t see how they can be sure they have Columbus’s DNA,” he wrote. “And DNA can’t prove someone was Jewish, only show it’s more or less likely.”

In fact, no one that has ever read Columbus' writings or actions could honestly state that he was anything but Christian.

    The Guardian newspaper's article is also skeptical, stating in its report on the DNA claims:

    His history-changing conclusions, however, have been greeted with extreme caution by some of his peers.

    “Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can’t really evaluate what was in the documentary because they offered no data from the analysis whatsoever,” Antonio Alonso, a geneticist and former director of Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences told El País.

    “My conclusion is that the documentary never shows Columbus’s DNA and, as scientists, we don’t know what analysis was undertaken.”

    Rodrigo Barquera, an expert in archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said he was surprised the findings had been shared without prior scrutiny from others in the scientific community.

    “Normally, you send your article to a scientific journal,” he told El País. “An editor is then assigned to the piece and at least three independent reviewers examine the work and decide whether it’s scientifically valid or not. If it is, it gets published and so the rest of the scientific community can say whether they agree with it or not. Putting it on the screen, far from that dialogue and with all this media focus gets in the way of the scientific community being able to say something about it.”

    Lorente defended his actions to the same newspaper, saying: “Our team and the university have always considered this study into Christopher Columbus and his family as a single, joined-up and inseparable unit, and nothing will be published until the investigation is completed.”

Yet he was quick to advertise his conclusions through a documentary and various media reports. Hmm.