Is there any credibility to the theory that Christopher Columbus wasn't Italian?

I've heard about it. All in all this is very complicated issue. You can read some information, about Columbus roots, it seems decent.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/20/opinion/garcia-c...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/22/christoph...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_theories_of_Ch...

There isn't such thing as ''ethnically Italian'', Italy didn't exist in 1492, if he was Ligurian, he spoke Geonovese that is a dialect of the Ligurian language. Ligurians are an ethnic group diverse by other Italians in culture.

For Lopez:

I can easily explain why Columbus didn't wrote in Italian.

Italian is an artificial language born in 1300s. Before Italian was born, in what is now Italy people spoke many dialects of Latin. One of these dialects was Florentine, it has been chosen to become officially Italian.

Only a VERY few people spoke Italian in 1300s, learning Italian was like learning English today, you learn a language that makes people that have other mothertongues understand each other.

During 1920s in Italy only few people spoke Italian, because they spoke their mothertongues. UNESCO knows and recognises that all local languages of north and south Italy are romance languages and the only dialects of Italian are those in Tuscany and Rome.

The Ligurian is a romance language, the Genovese was Cristofer Columbus' mothertongue, not Italian. He traveled with Spaniards, had close contacts with Spaniards and Portuguese, of course he could speak these languages. Discendents of the Italian immigrants in America moved there during 1900s or late 1800s don't speak Italian, because their parents didn't speak it. They spoke their mothertongues, Ligurian, Venetian, Sicilian etc, and their children learnt English or Spanish. That's because their mothertongue wasn't Italian. All my great-grandparents didn't speak Italian, nor they wrote it, they spoke Venetian and Emilian language even though they were Italians living in Italy.

So, we have solved the doubt about the language.

You should ask "Is there any credibility to the Genoa theory"!

Explain how it is possible for a shepherd's son from Genoa to travel 3.000Km to the Atlantic and marry the Portuguese King's cousin. Explain how his son was named Diego Colón and not Columbus. Explain how Pope Alexander V refer him as Colón and not Columbus. Explain how he is registered in some Portuguese expeditions to west Africa when only Portuguese officials were allowed on board. Explain how he wrote in Spanish with grammatical mistakes that only a Portuguese would do, using Portuguese expressions instead of the Spanish equivalents. And NEVER wrote in Italian.

The big question is if he was Catalan or Portuguese.

The Genoa theory came up because in the 1500's it was common in Italy to forge testaments and legal documents when someone died. Some tried to contest Diego Colón full rights to his father fortune.

Regarding the Jewish heritage, there are some evidences, but it is not conclusive.

My take? He was a Portuguese nobleman born in Cuba, Alentejo (yes, you heard it right, CUBA!) who faked a desertion to Spain in order to lure them to the New World, diverting attentions from the African route to India. He presented a fake map of the west coast of Africa where the Cape of Good Hope lied at 55º Latitude instead of the real 33º, making it look much harder to reach. This map was shown by King John of Portugal in the town of Évora 2 years before his "desertion".

You have to understand that many families moved around Europe at many periods in history, driven by famine, or the hope of plenty, or pl;ague, or by religious or ethnic persecution, or by demand for a particular type of craftsman, etc. So in many cases it is hard after a few generations to state that a particular person is 'from' any particular background.

My mother's family was expelled from France along with a huge number of other Hugenots a few hundred years ago. How does that relate to my Britishness? My children have dual British and Australian citizenship because my wife was from Australia.

So it is really not of great interest as to how Columbus got from Genoa to Spain.

There was a documentary on TV that showed a DNA analysis that was done of the bones of Christopher Columbus. The DNA analysis indicated that he was not Semitic, but he did come from the Barcelona region of Spain. Apparently he was Catalonian.

There is no proof of Columbus' origins. So at this point, any theory is credible.

Columbus sounds Greek. I think it was a time traveler.