Who knew you could find ethnicity in fingerprints?

Discovery Channel :: News :: Da Vinci Fingerprint Reveals Arab Heritage?
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Part of article (for full article, click on link)
. . . After scouring manuscripts and notebooks, the researchers found two other fingerprints that matched and completed the Ermine markings. The result was an entire fingertip, possibly belonging to the left forefinger.

Fingerprints are unique and don't change over a lifetime. Analysis of the skin's arches, loops and whorls — a science known as dermatoglyphics — has shown that there is a link between fingerprints and populations.

In the case of Leonardo's fingertip, patterns and ridges pointed to the Middle East, the researchers concluded.

"The fingerprint features patterns such as the central whorl that are dominant in the Middle East. About 60 percent of the Middle Eastern population display the same dermatoglyphic structure found in the fingerprint," Capasso said.

The discovery would support Vezzosi's claim that Leonardo's mother was not a local peasant girl as previously thought, but a Middle Eastern slave. . . .