End of the Enigmatic Christopher Columbus: A Man at Last Emerges to Eradicate the Myth

History is a record of the past – sculptured by omissions, interlarded with distortions, brazen lies and innocent befuddlement – forming an amalgam that’s often stubbornly resistant to analysis. For the sheer scale and persistence of its inaccuracies, few of history’s mistold tales could match the mix-ups associated with a certain Christopher Columbus.

Mainstream accounts depict Columbus as an incompetent, seafaring, Genoese peasant wool weaver who washed up on the shores of Portugal in 1476 and there began a career that would make “rags to riches” a lackluster understatement. But a quarter century of research has transformed both the role and the identity of this most illustrious of all explorers.

Long-lost relations, hidden in plain sight: New York’s gracious Central Park memorializes two men from very distant spheres of eminence. A new Columbus biography pinpoints King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland/Lithuania (left), victor in one of Medieval Europe’s largest and most decisive battles, as the grandfather of Christopher Columbus (right). (Photos Manuel Rosa, 2009)