DNA Connects 5 Men to Leonardo da Vinci

An 89-year-old man in Italy who built model airplanes before acquiring a pilot's license, and whose inventions included a new plane propellor, has a better idea now where those interests came from. Dalmazio Vinci and four other men living in Tuscany all have DNA matching segments of the Y chromosome from the bone of Leonardo da Vinci, the Telegraph reports. "I have been asked so many times—sometimes just to tease—so are you a descendent of Leonardo da Vinci? But in the end, it turned out to be true," said Giovanni Vinci, a retired technician in a municipal engineering office.

For years, a team of researchers, historians, molecular biologists, and forensic anthropologists has been tracing the da Vinci's family ancestry. The man himself, who died in 1519, had no children but is thought to have had 22 half-siblings. The effort has produced a family tree involving more than 400 people going back 21 generations, to 1331. Tests of da Vinci's bone fragments from the family tomb in the town of Vinci showed that at least five living people are his heirs. They range in age from 49 to 89. Less scientific is an assessment of the traits the men seem to share with their ancestor.

Dalmazio Vinci never received a patent for his inventions, though he also developed new ship refrigerator systems. And he built some of Italy's first go-karts in Italy using lawnmower engines. The fine tapestries of Mauro Vinci, an artisan who called the revelation "a great satisfaction," have covered the beds of people including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bruno Vinci, who said his father and aunts tried unsuccessfully for years to prove the connection with ancestral manuscripts, is a former metal mechanic. Milko Vinci, the youngest of the group, said he sees commonalities. "I was born left-handed, and wrote my first words backwards, and since I was little I have loved to take things apart to see how they work," he said. But Vinci conceded that to say that makes him "just like Leonardo would be a big overstatement." (More Leonardo da Vinci stories.)