Leonardo's Vitruvian Man
Posted on 03/15/2026 8:14:20 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
...the idea behind the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project, which aims to accurately answer a simple question: since we couldn't sequence Leonardo's DNA in the 1500s, are his bones at Amboise Castle really his?
To get there, the team plans to compare DNA from Leonardo's remains with profiles from his living relatives -- and, if the samples check out, assemble more of Leonardo's genome.
Because the legendary Renaissance artist had no children, researchers Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato of the Leonardo Da Vinci Heritage Association started with old-school genealogy, publishing Genìa Da Vinci. Genealogy and Genetics for Leonardo's DNA. Their tree follows collateral lines through Leonardo's father and a half-brother, tracing the male lineage back to 1331 and flagging relatives whose DNA could anchor the test.
The emphasis on the paternal line of Leonardo's lineage is due to more than just the availability of information, as Leonardo was born out of wedlock from a union between the respected notary Ser Piero and a peasant woman identified as Caterina. It's because the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project relied on the Y-chromosome to identify 15 male-line descendants of Leonardo's branch of his family tree, as that chromosome is passed unaltered from the father to the son...
In addition to verifying if Leonardo da Vinci truly is buried where he's supposed to be, sequencing his DNA can also offer a richer understanding of the man whose works continue to captivate the world more than half a millennium after his birth. Genetic markers can clarify physical traits we've only inferred from Leonardo's portraits, like ancestry, pigmentation, and certain health risks. It won't decode "genius," but it could add valuable biological context to his life and work.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
Thanks for the link!
Whose bones are in Grant’s Tomb? Ha.
US Grant and his wife, Julia.
If you ask the question that way, it’s no fun anymore.
It sounds ridiculous. How do they know that these six people are in any way descended from relatives of Leonardo da Vinci? It’s been 700 years. It would serve to prove that the people were not related to da Vinci if none of them matched the bones.
You can always tell who you mother was, and who her mother was, etc. You never know who your father was, or is until you get the DNA done.
1. Why would they even START to wonder this?
2. Why is THIS article in Popular Mechanics?
These are the sort of questions that keep me up at night 🤨
[image from eBay]
But the flapping wing thing is much less efficient than an airfoil, plus it doesn't glide very efficently, so it has much less range than your standard rubber band powered balsa wood plane.
OTOH, I scoff at the idea that his "aerial screw" had anything to do with the development of the helicopter.
For starters, it was simple a re-purprosing of the Archimedean screw. Then again, the Wrights get credited for inventing the airplane when everything on the Wright Flyers was invented by someone else.
Secondly, the Chinese were making toy "helicopters" more than a thousand years before da Vinci was born.
And the Aerial Screw design only looks intuitive if you don't understand how helicopters fly. They don't fly by blowing air downward, they fly by generating lift by the spinning of long, skinny airfoils. They blow some air down as a byproduct but that's a minor contrubtor to lift (except when in ground effect).
If the Chinese thought to bevel the edges on their toy for streamlining, theirs also would have had primitive airfoils.
So in that respect, this design probably served more as misdirection than as inspiration because it had would-be inventors chasing the wrong idea for centuries (which is evident from some of the early failed prototypes).
Plus he apparently offers four capstan bars for propulsion, as if four people were going to turn the capstan by running in circles really fast, like hamsters in a wheel. Meaning he was orders of magnitude off on the power requirement.
And there are no flight control surfaces, no flight controls, and no pilot's station.
It's not a very efficient method for moving air, less so than a bog-standard rotating fan. There have been working "toy" models built from composites and mylar with modern tiny hi-torque electric motors. They got around the lack of control surfaces by using four separate aerial screws, one at each corner, and they controled flight by manipulating the rpms of the individual screws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsG-Mcn29kg
Which proves nothing because you can make an ironing board fly, provided you put enough horsepower on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpTyfjYMlNc
The world record endurance for a human-powered helicopter is 64 seconds. The world record endurance for a human-powered airplane is almost 220 times longer, six minutes short of four hours. Both were powered by elite cyclists. Which should give you some idea of difference in the relative efficiencies of fixed wing flight versus rotary wing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human-powered_aircraft
Call the aerial screw "a notion." Even to call it "an idea" is a bit of an overqualification because it doesn't address so many of the major requirements for even a primitive working model.
But an invention? Not even close.
This only works id Da Vinci’s father is actually the man his mother said was the father.
If there is no match, we simply won’t know if it’s not his bones or not his putative father.
The three of you should get together for coffee.
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-leonardo-da-vinci-family-tree.html
“The Y chromosome, passed on to male descendants, is known to remain almost unchanged through 25 generations. Comparing the Y chromosome of today’s male relatives with that of their ancestors in ancient and modern burial sites would both verify the uninterrupted family line and certify Leonardo’s own Y chromosome marker.”
Well, I for one couldn’t care less who’s bones are in some ancient grave.
Well they know it was a gay guy should narrow the hunt.
IOW, ironically, you have no reason to click on the topic.
I had an ornithopter sample around at one time. I was sooo young, and thought I could join up with the company that made them and sold them through an indie (self-employed, quarterly taxes) sales force.
“ How do they know that these six people are in any way descended from relatives of Leonardo da Vinci? It’s been 700 years.”
They have good records there
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