Where Lies Columbus?

"This is the most pleasant place on earth," said Christopher Columbus shortly after he set up his New World headquarters on Espanola, the Caribbean island now divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Then, according to the legend, he added: "Here I will be buried." And there in 1898 his remains were enshrined in a new marble tomb in the cathedral at Santo Domingo, which is now called Ciudad Trujillo. That same year the navigator's descendants also buried his remains back in Spain in the family plot in Seville. The question ever since: Which tomb has the tibia?

Last week a U.S. physician gave evidence to back a Solomonic answer that should satisfy both claimants. Professor Charles Weer Goff, who teaches orthopedic surgery at Yale Medical School and physical anthropology at Hartford's Seminary Foundation, says that some of Columbus' remains are in Seville, some are in Ciudad Trujillo.

Arthritis & Wounds. Writing for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the surgeon-anthropologist describes how he got Joseph Farland, U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, to talk the Dominicans into opening the tomb in 1959. "With exacting protocol, three keys, a special committee including the Archbishop, scholars, Dominican scientists, state officials and, of course, a crowd of curious tourists, the bronze gates and sepulcher doors were unlocked. The crystal-covered ancient lead coffin with its bony contents was placed before me. In the high, arched cathedral nave, through open doors. I had my chance to settle once and for all the mystery; or so I believed."

For weeks Goff measured and photographed every piece of bone, analyzing each for age, structure, strength. Many bones were missing, but the rest clearly belonged to a male approximately 5 ft. 8 in. tall, who had a large head, suffered from arthritis, and died between the ages of 55 and 60, "probably of 'heart failure.' The ruggedness of the remains," says Goff, "indicates a muscular, vigorous male." The man also limped, had probably been wounded. When Goff found a lead ball in the bone dust, he set out to prove that Columbus had been wounded. In Madrid he verified a letter written by Columbus dated July 7, 1503 that said. "The seas were so high that my wound opened itself afresh."

Back & Forth. While in Spain, Goff also found that not one of the bones in Seville was duplicated in Ciudad Trujillo. His tentative conclusion: Columbus died in 1506 in Valladolid, Spain; his remains were buried in a monastery near Seville; soon after 1541 the bones were shipped to Santo Domingo; rediscovered towards the end of the 18th century, the bones were apparently split up--some being sent to Havana, then back to Seville, the rest remaining in the cathedral; both were buried anew in 1898.

"At present my theory cannot be disproved," says Dr. Goff. "But to be universally accepted one more test must be undertaken." This is to test the dried bone blood of each group, compare the findings. But to do it, Dr. Goff needs permission from Spain's Francisco Franco, who so far has failed to show his share of curiosity in the 450-year-old enigma.

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