We know where he went and now we know where he ended up. The final resting place of Christopher Columbus, the 15th-century explorer, has been confirmed more than five centuries after his death, according to Spanish experts. Spain's Seville Cathedral has long claimed to hold the remains of Columbus, but some Dominicans claim Seville's remains are actually those of Columbus' son, Diego, as a casket claiming to hold Columbus' bone fragments was unearthed during an excavation of Santo Domingo Cathedral in the Dominican Republic in 1877, per the Guardian and Euronews. The bones were later buried at the Columbus Lighthouse in Santo Domingo.
The confusion as to where Columbus ended up is owing to the movement of his remains after his 1506 death in the Spanish city of Valladolid. According to the Guardian, he wanted to be buried on the island of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), where his remains were taken in 1542. But the remains were then moved to Cuba in 1795 and apparently to Seville in 1898. Scientists say they can now confirm Columbus' remains are indeed housed in the Seville Cathedral as DNA samples taken from Columbus' cathedral tomb matched with samples taken from a son and brother of the explorer.
"This is a groundbreaking discovery that settles a long-standing historical debate," says lead investigator José Antonio Lorente, a forensic medical expert at the University of Granada, per Euronews. However, he notes parts of Columbus could still be in the Caribbean. Lorente also helped solve the mystery of where Columbus came from, but the answer to that question will only be revealed in a TV documentary, Columbus DNA: His True Origin, to air Saturday on Spanish public broadcaster TVE. Many experts believe Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, but competing theories suggest he hailed from Spain, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, France, Greece, or Scotland. (More Christopher Columbus stories.)
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