Christopher Columbus final official resting place revealed and researchers say they now know explorers ethnicity

Just in time for the long weekend.Genetic testing has finally confirmed the official resting place of Christopher Columbus, and scientists who announced the discovery say they also now know his ethnic origin — although they aren’t revealing it yet.The partial set of human remains housed in an elaborate catafalque at the Seville Cathedral in Spain are indeed those of the controversial explorer, forensic medical expert José Antonio Lorente said Thursday.Lorente and other members of a team of scientists at the University of Granada identified the remains using samples taken from Columbus’s son, Fernando, and one of his brothers.“Today, thanks to new technology, the previous partial theory that the remains in Seville are those of Christopher Columbus has been definitively confirmed,” Lorente said at a press conference.Columbus died in what is now Spain in 1506, but he supposedly wanted to be buried on the island of Hispaniola, which is made up of present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.His remains were said to have been taken there in 1542.All or at least some of them are then believed to have been moved to Cuba in 1795 and then to Seville in 1898, when Spain lost control of Cuba in the Spanish-American War.Over the past century, experts have debated whether Columbus’ full remains were taken to Seville for his official final resting place or if some or all of them were still unofficially in the DR.In 1877, an excavation of the Santo Domingo Cathedral in the Dominican Republic had turned up a small lead box of incomplete bone fragments labeled as Columbus’.Those remains – which are now interred at the so-called Columbus Lighthouse in Santo Domingo Este — also might belong to the explorer, as the set of remains in Seville is incomplete, too, Lorente said.It wasn’t clear if testing would be done on the remains in the DR.As for Columbus’ genetic background, the scientist played coy when pressed about what the DNA tests revealed.Columbus famously...