> AFAIK they welcomed converts with open arms (especially Muslim ones),

While that was seemingly true in the 1400s when ex-Jewish Conversos had sometimes significant economic and even political power. That had changed by the 1500s, antisemitism (same applying to Muslim converts) became much more focused on race and not just religion.

Conversos and Moriscos were persecuted and discriminated culminating in the expulsion of 1609 (which targeted hundreds of thousands of people who had technically been Christians for the past ~100 years).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpieza_de_sangre

In some cases it was pretty extreme and not that dissimilar to the one-drop rule in the US (and the decentralized pseudo-segregation wasn’t that dissimilar either).

Descendants of Jewish and Muslim converts were even banned from emigrating into the American Colonies a few decades after Columbus.

It likely wasn’t as bad yet in the 1490s but had Columbus Jewish origin (assume that’s actually true) been know he probably would have faced significant barriers in holding political office or even attracting investment for his expeditions.

There are quite a few famous converts from Judaism to Christianity. And it's not quite clear-cut, and sometimes has "strange" side-effects.

Take, for instance, Cantor (the father of the set theory), who was a second generation convert, if memory serves. Even though he was a devote Christian, he had some ties to Judaism (eg. choosing Hebrew letters for the infinite sets he worked with). And, in general he was somewhat insane, and religion played a central role in his insanity, where both Christianity and Judaism had some degree of influence.

Me, coming from a family of converts, who later became atheists, I can attest to that neither me, nor my parents ever cared for organized religion or for following tradition. But, some things remained through generation regardless. I never learned enough Hebrew to read Bible comfortably (i.e. I need to look up words in a dictionary sometimes), but I almost teared up when I watched a collection of recordings someone made of people from different national / linguistic backgrounds reading Hebrew Bible, because at that point I realized that even though imperfectly, I'm able to understand someone writing many thousands years ago. The ability to connect over centuries to your ancestors, to get even an approximate idea of what they thought and how they felt -- this is something that's very unlikely to go away with conversion or a change of one's affiliation. This is also probably the reason you find quite a few people with vague Jewish ancestry still coming to Israel. Also, there's a "weird" trend of people wanting to be berried in Israel (because of how important that specific place is in Jewish tradition), even if in life they are nothing like religious Jews.

---

Bottom line: It's just a weird question. It's like trying to calculate the percentage by which any convert has converted. Maybe, even if Columbus' parents were converts, it's still not a question anyone can answer: how much Catholic was he?

> His choice to set sail for the New World on August 2, 1492, the exact date ordained for the expulsion of Jews from Spain does suggest he may have not converted yet.

This is one of the least compelling pieces of evidence: one doesn’t set out for a cross-oceanic voyage on a whim. He had sponsorship from the Spanish crown and lobbied and prepared for years for the journey. His journey was formally sanctioned by the the royal family in April of the year he left.

> the exact date ordained for the expulsion of Jews from Spain

This came up in another part of the thread, but it wasn't the exact date—the decree gave Jews until the end of July [0], while August 3 (not second) is the date he sailed.

It's still close enough that it may have been related, but it's not the slam dunk that "the exact date" makes it sound like it is.

[0] https://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/pjhr/chhre/pdf/hh-alhambr...

> His choice to set sail for the New World on August 2, 1492,

He could have just moved to Italy or the Low Countries?

> does suggest he may have not converted yet.

And he did while he was in the Americas? Why would the Castilian crown sponsor an expedition led by a known Jew and even make him governor of the newly discovered territories (note that in a few decades even converted descendants of Jews or Muslims were banned from emigrating to the new world after a few decades)

He set sail August 3rd, not August 2nd.

> And you can be certainly be Jewish without having Jewish DNA, but there’s some controversy as to whether the reverse is true.

What's the controversy? Biologically there's no such thing as "Jewish DNA". It's just a shorthand for "Human DNA haplotypes (AKA markers) that occur at significant frequencies among populations that identify today as Jewish".

For example, the YDNA haplotype J1, while it occurs at high frequency among Jewish populations, occurs at even higher frequencies among many non-Jewish groups in the Middle East and surrounding areas[1]. It's only somewhat distinctively "Jewish" in areas where Jewish people are a minority like Europe.

Furthermore, the emergence date of this haplotype 17-24k years ago predates the existence of the ethno/religious/cultural identity known as "Jewish" by almost 20,000 years.

Therefore the reverse/opposite of the statement, something like "you can have Jewish DNA and not be Jewish" is either trivially true or nonsensical.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J-M267

According to Jewish law, it is, in the case of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, the child is not a Jew.

There is not such thing as "Jewish" DNA. Is a culture and religion, but not a fully different race. Some genes could be in the past more represented, but it was just "Mediterranean dotation". A mix of European, African and Asian. Today is much more mixed fortunately.

David Cross has a funny [bit][1] about whether the reverse is true.

[1]: https://youtu.be/z09So1j4kpk?t=378

You can be a secular one, the same way many christians are. But often when people say x person is Y-ish, it just means that they have Y ancestry rather than they living under the cultural norms of Y

I’m really confused by this argument. How does it account for the Apostle Paul?

Almost anyone could convert to Judaism but Judaism is not a proselitist religion.

What exactly do you mean by "where there DNA comes from"? I smell some kind of biology oversimplification here but I will hear you first

  > A little etymological sidenote: Sephardic is just the Hebrew word for Spain, whereas Ashkenaz was one of the great grandsons of Noah associated with eastern and central Europe.

Ashkenaz, the descendant of Noah, was from present-day-Syria. Thus the term Ashkenazi literally means "From the area of present-day Syria" or more concisely "From the Levant".

  > However, when you see a Jew with the last name Ashkenazi, it's safe to assume they're Sephardi. Why? Because last names for Jews are a more recent historical development and these Jews immigrated to Sephardic territory hundreds of years ago (before the expulsion talked about in this thread) and have fully assimilated into the Sephardic tradition.

Why is the ‘reconquista’ “ill named”?

Also, Columbus largely made his own legend. Everyone told him he was wrong (and he was) but he just so happened to discover land people might actually want. And so he was very much vindicated by the discovery in his own eyes. And it was daring. Everyone rightly told him he was mad and incorrectly told him he would die. It was one of the craziest expeditions of all time. And because of it the Spanish Empire became one of the richest the world has ever seen, the legacy of which is still felt today.

This is not to Lionise Columbus but you have to acknowledge the context of the time. Greenland and Newfoundland were not well known and are a long way from the latitude Columbus was aiming at. He was an idiot, and cruel by our standards, but he was great.

> and the vikings (presumably Leif Erikson)

That’s closer to a piece of historical trivia though, the Viking discovery of North America had very limited impact and nobody in Europe was aware of it or understood the significance.

What Columbus did led to dozens of other expeditions almost immediately. Within a few decades the largest the New World states were subjugated by Europeans and some of the worst recorded epidemics in human history swept the continent decimating societies which hadn’t even had any direct contact with Europeans yet.

He also allowed Spain to become the preeminent European power for the next century or so.

How is that not extremely significant?

> I also don't understand why people get a boner with Columbus.

He is primarily of interest because Italian-Americans want a feeling of pride and so celebrate "one of their own", the Genovese Columbus. And America is very big and important, so whatever it cares about, a lot of other people care about.

If you were Canadian instead, you'd probably be genned up on John Cabot (also Genovese) and Newfoundland and CODFISH! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds8G9sFOK5w]

There's no point sneering that Leif Erikson got there first, Europe as a whole did not particularly know The Americas existed until Columbus confirmed it. Then they rushed to colonise it... which is where most of the Americans (and Canadians) ultimately come from. So that's why it's important to so many of them.

> since the Greeks that people knew the world was not flat

Actually, most Greek knowledge had fundamentally disappeared from Western Europe for centuries, even before the official dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. Some of it had just reappeared in the XV century, largely through translations of Arabic books; this is why the Renaissance produced so much stuff inspired by classic material - because it was all new and exciting to the people of the period, like they'd rediscovered an ancient civilization!

Also by "people" here we are literally talking about the 0.1% - educated people who could read and had access to books, which at the time were very rare and super expensive.

What the vikings did was not common knowledge, because basically they didn't come back regularly and so there was no real knowledge of their actions anywhere in Europe.

The consensus at the time, among the learned (i.e. Catholic Church and a few scientists with royal patronage here and there) was that the Earth was probably round, and probably small enough that you could maybe sail all the way to China and India from the edge of Europe - but they had no idea that there was land in between.

> I also don't understand why people get a boner with Columbus. It is since the Greeks that people knew the world was not flat, and the vikings (presumably Leif Erikson) landed in Canada much earlier after a quick hop from Greeland. The only questions left at that point were: how big is that land over there, and can you get to India traveling West? It's all good and stuff, but not mind-blowing to me.

Columbus was also famously a big idiot that just got lucky. He believed for some reason that the earth was much smaller than it actually was (contrary to established belief at the time) and that he could easily find a way to India by travelling over the Atlantic. If the Americas didn't exist, he and his crew would have died at sea. He remained convinced that the territory he discovered was part of India until his death.

> I don’t understand boners

Well, he literally got into a 70-ft wooden sailboat and crossed the Atlantic ocean with no certainty of landfall, basically sailing on spec, and because of that voyage, opened up a new hemisphere of the planet to development, and (with unfortunate but inevitable awful consequence) brought humanity together again after a substantial period of isolation.

We admire the Pacific Islanders for similar navigation feats as they travelled eastward, and the Vikings for traveling westward to Greenland and America, but neither of those efforts had so profound an effect as what Columbus pulled off.

> How does a Jew discovering the Americas benefit the Spanish regime when the Spanish Catholic monarchy precisely kicked all Jews and Muslims from the peninsula with their ill-named "reconquista"?

The question is not whether Columbus was Jewish of not. The question is whether he was actually Spanish. As the article states, that's heavily disputed.

From the article:

> Over the centuries, it has been suggested that the explorer could have been Genoese, Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Portuguese or Scottish.

The article leads by referring to Columbus as a son of Genoa.

Then a Spanish researcher decides to claim Columbus is Spanish on Spain's national day, supposedly based on an authoritative scientific study but in spite of not presenting any evidence that supports his claim.

Ill named?

The relevant bit is him being Spanish. That's what makes it appealing to the target audience of the article. Him not being catholic is not relevant and gets swept under the rug the same way the gypsy origin of flamenco (now considered spain's most popular form of folk music) get swept under the rug due to its popularity.

And the edict for expulsion of practicing Jews was issued in 1492, same year of Columbus's first voyage.

> Presumably this Lorente has more evidence he hasn't put on display, so it isn't completely baseless either.

Presumably, if he had more evidence, he would be displaying it in order to make his case better.

There are many claims of discovery of the Americas (even by ice age Frenchmen), but the one that had impact was Columbus'.

Somebody: changes history forever.

People: "booh, he is not important at all, even my cousin could have discovered a new continent"...

LOL, what happened with the new generations?

The English and Elizabeth projected their crimes onto Spain.

Proof is in the pudding where is the percentage of natives highest? Where Spaniards colonized (Mexico, Bolivia, Peru)? Or the Brits (Virginia, Connecticut, all of Canada except Quebec)?

(Disclaimer, I'm... I don't know what I am)

Oh I don't dispute that. Despite the documented atrocities, the number of.native deaths by disease are greatly exaggerated, Charles V did write the precursor document of the human rights bill (after getting wind of what went about in Peru), and the Spaniards did promote marriages with natives. Studies of racial superiority the kind of which were prevalent at the end of the 19th century didn't come from Spain either.

History is not a black and white frame that we should either be proud or disgusted about. The fact that the Spanish state promotes such historical wash-ups says more about its current leaders.

FWIW the columbus expedition was considered a great failure at the time. He did fail to reach the indies by the west, and the couple of "indians" he brought to court was little compensation for the lack of lucrative spices. Reaching Lisbon first on the way back was also a disaster, prompting an immediate ultimatum by the portuguese by violation of a treaty, which led ultimately to the tordesilhas treaty which left the kingdom of castille and aragon out of the spice trade. He felt the failure so personally that he sailed back 4 times looking for a passage to the great sea beyond the new world, failing every time and becoming so embittered in the process, that he eventually lost his allies in court. It was only 40 years and lots of failed settlements after the columbus expedition that Spain hit proverbial jackpot and found the gold and silver which made the nation extremely wealthy in Europe, for a time. By then, the new world already had a new name: the Americas. The greatest of the hostorical humiliations, named after an ordinary italian cartographer, rather than the legendary captain which reached it in the first place.

Enshrining him as Spaniard will be of little consolation for his name.

Agreed that it's important not to read too much into this about Columbus as a person, but if this is true there are plenty of interesting things to draw from it. It would suggest that he probably came from a family that converted to Catholicism (given the time period, probably under duress).

Had his ancestors made a different choice Columbus himself may have been expelled from Spain shortly before he sailed on August 3.

It adds a wild irony to the story considering he's responsible for the expansion of the Spanish and introduced Catholicism to an entire continent.

Someone who was punished by the Spanish and forced to convert a generation or two ago turns into its champion and spreads it elsewhere?

> He was incredibly religious. In his Catholicism

Possibly as a way to conceal his background? Of course that’s pure speculation and it wasn’t as bad yet until later in the the 1500s but Spain became an extremely racist society, people who couldn’t prove that they weren’t descendants of Jewish or Muslim converts were often barred from holding political office or even testify in court etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpieza_de_sangre#:~:text=O....

You are not logic-ing correctly. The financiers were Jewish. Jews do not charge interest to other Jews; if Columbus were not Jewish they would have charged interest. This is written in Deuteronomy 23:20-21 as well as Leviticus and Exodus and also discussed by Maimonides

.. except that there isn't really a thing such as Jewish DNA. Other than that, yes we're mostly all a mixture of people travelling and migrating and settling down and moving, and they came from all over over the centuries and millennia.

This article is also from before the release of any test results:

  “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.

I think it would have been more polite if they all converted to Judaism is cultural unity was the goal.

hahaha what good joke

A couple of years ago I made a bot to notify me about HN comment replies, but it's kind of abandoned now. I probably should get it up and running again, checking this manually is such a hassle

https://github.com/golergka/hn-comment-bot

It’s a nickname of the Guardian https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graun

Apparently discovering new islands isn't what it used to be.

He was a small gear in a long chain of events. If not Columbus, someone else would likely have found the New World. It was the age of (Europeans) Discovery after all, where many people were sailing the world and finding new routes and lands.

He is important because he changed the power dynamics of the old world. And as a result created probably the most powerful country in the world. I'm not American, and not from colonial power country, but it was significant.

The lionization of Columbus was started by late 19th century Italian immigrants who wanted something to demonstrate their worth to an America that looked down on them. It is somewhat relevant if he wasn't actually Italian.

> it rough size was also known

And it had been known for 1600 years already!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

> So I agree, no reason to give him any more attention then any of the many other half assed villains which lucked out in human history.

I mean that version of the story is pretty interesting too, right?

One can see a lot of parallels between startup culture, really. You start off with a dumb idea, you pitch it over and over for years till you find a sucker, you get funding because of nepotism / connections, your dumb idea fails but you stumble across something that works on the way, then you move fast and break things (like... the entire indigenous population).

I suspect that a lot of the recent dirt about Columbus comes from documents involving his (and his decedents) court case to assert ownership of the New World. In particular, I suspect that the most damning accusations come from briefs filed by opposing counsel:

"In 1500, during his third voyage to the Americas, Columbus was arrested and dismissed from his posts. He and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a lengthy series of court cases against the Castilian crown, known as the pleitos colombinos, alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs.[93] The Columbus family had some success in their first litigation, as a judgment of 1511 confirmed Diego's position as viceroy but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation in 1512, which lasted until 1536, and further disputes initiated by heirs continued until 1790." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

280 years of legal battle is going to be a treasure trove of dirt, if you want to find it.

As for "why now" and "why does it matter what his heritage is" I think it has everything to do with the cultural milieu. Modern white liberals hate their heritage which they characterize as ancestors of colonizers, slave owners, and exploiters. If Columbus was Jewish this gives left-wing anti-Semites extra ammunition against Jews. It aligns the deep hatred for colonizers with deep hatred for Israel for its actions in it's war with Hamas.

Oh, that makes sense. Thank you.

I thought sephardim scattered into a lot of places, including elsewhere in Europe (even places like Amsterdam) and North Africa. Not to mention conversos that stayed put.

Why ? They were allowed to practice in Spain's and even retained positions of influence.

Also what's the India connection?

I'd find it hard to believe all the cities in Spain decided to expel the Jewish people all on the same day. The inquisition began decades earlier so there probably were indications something bad was going to happen