24133: (pub) Chamberlain: Columbus' graves (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By DANIEL WOOLLS

   MADRID, Jan 17 (AP) -- 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.