Posted on 01/18/2005 7:47:22 AM PST by blam
Team Searching for Columbus' Remains
Mon Jan 17, 3:19 PM ET Science - AP
By DANIEL WOOLLS
MADRID, Spain - Spanish researchers said Monday they've won permission to open a tomb in the Dominican Republic purported to hold remains of Christopher Columbus, edging closer to solving a century-old mystery over whether those bones or a rival set in Spain are the real thing.
A team of two high school teachers from Seville and a leading Spanish forensic geneticist has been testing 500-year-old bone slivers for more than two years to try to pinpoint the final resting place of the explorer who arrived in the New World by accident in 1492 on an expedition chartered by Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel.
During a visit to the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo on Feb. 14-15, the team will watch the opening of the tomb, housed in a sprawling monument to Columbus, and examine the condition of the bones inside, said Marcial Castro, one of the teachers.
The team will then recommend to the Dominican government whether the bones are in good enough shape to extract DNA samples. If the genetic material is intact and the Dominican government approves, the DNA would then be cross-checked against samples from Columbus relatives buried in Seville, along with remains in a cathedral in Seville that Spain says are those of Columbus himself.
"This is a big step by the Dominican government," Castro told The Associated Press from Seville on Monday. "A hugely important one."
He cautioned, however, that for now the team has permission only to examine the bones visually — not glean a DNA sample, which might provide the last missing piece of the puzzle.
The problem is that the double helix that provides the blueprint for life degrades over time, just as bones do. As soon as the team sees the bones in Santo Domingo, they'll have a good idea what they are up against.
"Just by looking at a bone a geneticist knows the probability that it contains usable DNA," Castro said.
He said the Dominican Deputy Culture Minister, Sulamita Puig, gave the go-ahead to the Spanish team in a fax on Friday.
The dispute over which set of remains are authentic has simmered for more than 100 years.
Castro's team has examined DNA from the bones in Seville along with DNA from remains widely believed to be those of Columbus' brother Diego and from bones known to belong to Columbus' son Hernando. The latter two sets are also in Seville.
Cross-checking of these three samples has proved inconclusive because of the deteriorated state of the DNA. So the team needed access to the bones in Santo Domingo.
Columbus was buried in the northern Spanish city of Valladolid, where he died on May 20, 1506. He had asked to be buried in the Americas, but no church of sufficient stature existed there. Three years later his remains were moved to a monastery on La Cartuja, next to Seville.
In 1537, Maria de Rojas y Toledo, widow of another of Columbus' sons, Diego, sent the bones of her husband and his father to the cathedral in Santo Domingo for burial. They remained there until 1795, when Spain ceded the island of Hispaniola to France and decided Columbus' remains should not fall into the hands of foreigners. Hispaniola comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
A set of remains that the Spaniards believed were Columbus' were first shipped to Havana, Cuba, and then back to Seville when the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898.
In 1877, however, workers digging in the Santo Domingo cathedral unearthed a leaden box containing bones and bearing the inscription, "Illustrious and distinguished male, Christopher Columbus."
The Dominicans say these are the genuine remains and the Spaniards took the wrong body with them back in 1795.
GGG Ping
Every couple of years they dig up some poor Basket. A couple of years ago it was Jesse James.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
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If they find the body, they'll immediately convene a hearing to determine if ole Cristobal is fit to stand trial for genocide.
Not much of a final resting place if they are going to disturb the remains.
Question: Why aren't anthropologists considered "grave robbers"?
He will be found guilty of genocide posthumously. Reparations will be demanded of all indigenous non-white Americans from all European Colonial powers. All european named cities and places in the Americas will revert to their original names. All of New York City will revert back to Manhattan, Long Island will revert to Sewanhackey, New Jersey will revert to Scheyichbi, etc... Only landlocked Switzerland will survive...
I personally am glad that they are finally doing this.
*this is subject to debate among scholars as to whether or not Columbus discovered America, it is not a debate that he is a Great Satan however, just maybe not the Original. /humor
We all know it's Bush's fault.
Same reason that tax collectors can't rightfully be called "muggers".
By definition, grave robbers have neither the permission of family or the authorities to do their thing.
D'OH!
LIBs: Amen to that! Wait a second, we don't believe in God...
Anthropology: "The Study Of Man In Relation To Distribution, Origin, Classification, And Relationship Of Races, Physical Character, Environmental And Social Relations, And Culture."
You must be thinking about archaeologists? Anthropologists generally don't dig up anything from the earth.
You are correct. Anyway, why aren't archaeologists considered grave robbers?
I don't know, I'm an ex-chip-maker. Let's ask FReeper Coyoteman, he's a professional archaeologist with a new book just released.
We have a good union.
LOL. Grave diggers union?
LOL. Grave diggers union?
No, actually--the Loyal Order of Gravediggers! You must have heard of us!
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
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