The exhumation took place in March 2022, in the church of Santa María de Gracia, in Gelves (Seville). Specifically, in its underground crypt, where the family tomb of the Counts of Gelves is located, a place that houses the remains of the largest number of descendants of Christopher Columbus.
Carmen García, promoter and patron of the research, and her team reached there to analyze the remains and try to definitively put an end to the doubts about the identity of Christopher Columbus. The most widespread theory is that the discoverer of America was Genoese, but there are numerous historians who point to other origins.
She is convinced that it is the Galician nobleman Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor and has been trying for over a decade to solve the enigma from a "rigorous scientific perspective."
In Gelves, as she was able to reconstruct thanks to various historical documents, for example, the granddaughter of the Admiral, Isabel Colón de Toledo, was buried, along with her son and grandson... in other words, the heirs of Columbus' DNA. The difficulty was that the remains were not individualized but mixed in several sarcophagi.
The team in charge of the exhumation, led by the archaeologist Andrés Bonilla, extracted bone samples from 12 individuals -six men and six women-, of which genetic analyses and other tests have been carried out on seven, and six have been identified.
The results have been detailed in an article titled "Archaeogenomic and bioinformatic analysis of Columbus' lineage: evidence from the Counts of Gelves," published on the bioRxiv portal, a freely accessible repository for the distribution of unpublished scientific texts.
"We have concluded that two of the individuals analyzed - María de Castro and Jorge Alberto de Portugal - show similarities with the Zúñiga (originating from Navarre) and Sotomayor (Galicia) families, which confirms the hypothesis that Christopher Columbus was of Galician origin. And, after analyzing 16 generations of the Zúñiga and Sotomayor families, we did not find another individual who could carry the genetic heritage of both than Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor," summarizes Carmen García the main conclusions, which would support her theory about Columbus' identity.
The 22-page text, detailing step by step the research, states that the first individual identified was Jorge Alberto de Portugal, III Count of Gelves, grandson of Isabel Colón de Toledo, and therefore great-grandson of Christopher Columbus. Deceased at 23 years old - in 1589, after falling off a horse - it was not difficult to find him, as he was the only young adult male in the crypt.
The genetic studies revealed an unexpected biological relationship between him and another identified individual: María de Castro Girón de Portugal, VI Countess of Gelves. To understand why, "an exhaustive investigation of their entire ancestry" was carried out, leading to the conclusion that "the common ancestors of the two had a deep convergence with the Zúñiga and Sotomayor houses."
Their relationship was confirmed by the genetic study conducted at the Citogen laboratory (Zaragoza) by Isabel Navarro, technical director of the Forensic Genetics department, who was in charge of analyzing the samples. "We used the massive sequencing technique or NGS to perform forensic genetic genealogy analysis, something that has not been done before on such ancient remains, at least there is nothing published," says the geneticist.
"It is a technique that analyzes 10,230 genetic markers, of which almost 10,000 are associated with kinship, allowing the establishment of family relationships. With the help of a bioinformatic algorithm, when entering the data, the system looks for a match: 'This one has a fourth-degree kinship with this one'." In simpler terms, it works like platforms such as MyHeritage, where people upload their DNA to find relatives.
Thanks to this pioneering technique, they found that among the six identified individuals there was a grandmother, her son, and her grandson. They were Isabel de la Cueva - first wife of Pedro Nuño Colón de Portugal, VI Count of Gelves, a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus - her son Pedro Manuel Colón de Portugal y de la Cueva - VII Count of Gelves - and her grandson Pedro Manuel Florentín Colón de Portugal - VIII Count of Gelves. The sixth identified individual would be Álvaro Jacinto Colón de Portugal, V Count of Gelves.
"The results obtained provide a scientific and objective proof that the theory that Columbus was Galician is feasible; genetics points in that direction. Naturally, further research is needed, but a path is opened for it to be so," explains Isabel Navarro, the geneticist.
"The research has been carried out thanks to the convergence of many disciplines, not just one," emphasizes Carmen García, the project's promoter. Thus, the six have also been identified thanks to historical documents certifying that they were buried in Gelves; to the anthropological study of the bones, establishing age, height, or sex; to the carbon 14 test, estimating the date of death, or to the study of stable isotopes to measure the chemical elements of the bone: "The values suggest a diet mainly composed of marine proteins, which is consistent with the coastal environments of Gelves and Cádiz, where they resided."
The bone samples have also undergone laser ablation, an unprecedented technique in this type of study, carried out by the Center for Assistance in Research (CAI) of Archaeometry and Archaeological Analysis of the Complutense University, led by José Yravedra.
This test has located titanium residues in individuals that came from a previous burial in Madrid - as in the case of the remains associated with Isabel de la Cueva and Pedro Manuel Florentín, for example - unlike those who were buried directly in Gelves. Finally, the examination of biogeographic markers indicates what was expected: they came from Western Europe.
Before the exhumation in Gelves, Carmen García promoted, in September 2021, the exhumation of the ancestors of Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor located in the church of Santo Domingo de Tuy (Pontevedra): "The intention is to finish analyzing the remains from Gelves and compare them with those we extracted from Tuy and with the data shared by Carlos de Vilanova, promoter of the exhumation of another sarcophagus of the Sotomayor family from the Cathedral of Tuy in 2015, with whom we have been collaborating for years. I know that identifying Columbus as Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor is only a matter of time."
Her research has been carried out independently of José Antonio Lorente, who in the TVE documentary Colón ADN. Su verdadero origen, highly questioned by the scientific community, dismissed, among others, the Galician origin and suggested the Sephardic Jewish one.
"My research has expert witness validity," says García, with training and experience as a jurist. "It is prepared to face any legal actions that may be considered necessary if an attempt is made to discredit it."