Experts reconstruct Leonardo fingerprint

Yahoo! AP ^ | Fri Dec 1, 2006 | Marta Falconi

[SunkenCiv]

The research was based on a first core of photographs of about 200 fingerprints -- most of them partial -- taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life... The artist often ate while working, and Capasso and other experts said his fingerprints could include traces of saliva, blood or the food he ate the night before. It is information that could help clear up questions about his origins... "The one we found in this finger tip applies to 60 percent of the Arabic population, which suggests the possibility that his mother was of Middle Eastern origin," Capasso said... What the science says, "generally speaking, is that if your parent has a lot of arches, you'll probably have a lot of arches," said Simon Cole, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine... "you can't predict one person's race from these kinds of incidences," he said, especially if looking at only one finger. The idea that Leonardo's mother could have been a slave who came to Tuscany from Constantinople -- now Istanbul -- is not new and has been the object of other research. Alessandro Vezzosi, a Leonardo expert and the director of a museum dedicated to the artist in his hometown of Vinci, said there are documents that appear to back this up... "Still, her name was Caterina, the most common name among slaves in Tuscany, and we have no certain elements about her," he said.

[SunkenCiv]

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This undated photo released by the University of Chieti, Italy, on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006, shows fingerprints on a paper believed to be handled by Renaissance master Leonardo Da Vinci. Anthropologists said they have pieced together Leonardo da Vinci's left index fingerprint _ a discovery that could help shed light on such thing as the food the artist ate and whether his mother was of Arabic origin. The three-year research was based on a first core of professional quality photographs of about 200 fingerprints _ most of them partial_ taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Piero Lucco, Chieti University, ho)

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[SunkenCiv]

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[bannie]

WOW! Next, we'll be able to clone him from the saliva that was transfered from his hand to paper!

BTW: I wonder how many "many arches" are?

[SunkenCiv]

And he was part Arab! No axes being ground by these researchers in Socialist Italy...

[Fred Nerks]

The illegitimate son of a 25-year-old notary, Ser Piero, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, just outside Florence. His father took custody of the little fellow shortly after his birth, while his mother married someone else and moved to a neighboring town. They kept on having kids, although not with each other, and they eventually supplied him with a total of 17 half sisters and brothers...

http://www.mos.org/leonardo/bio.html

[texas booster]

If she was a slave from the Ottoman Empire then her true ancestry could have been anything from a nomadic peasant to one of the various Persian tribes to Indian, to Jewish or Kurd or Armenian.

Being a slave of the Arabs does not make you Arab. Or else most blacks out of Africa could claim Arab ancestry.

[SunkenCiv]

Exactly.

[SunkenCiv]

Da Vinci Fingerprint Reveals Arab Heritage
Discovery News | Oct. 28, 2006 | Rossella Lorenzi
Posted on 11/03/2006 1:37:49 PM EST by Lorianne
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1731644/posts