尋找達芬奇的DNA

　　5月23日BBC聽力：探求達芬奇的DNA

　　Who is this?

　　He was endlessly curious searching for answers ineverything he did. We think of him as the ultimaterenaissance man. He created a new idea of beauty.He reinvented the art of painting.

　　Leonardo de Vinci. And that was from our BBCdocumentary about the ultimate renaissance man. Well now scientists are hoping to extractDNA from de Vinci’s paintings and sketch books.

　　DNA is unbelievably powerful. Just think of what it’s doing in courtrooms and its transforming ofour understanding of our world, of ourselves. And it will have a massive effect we believe incoming decades on our understanding of history including the history of art. Why not beginwith Leonardo who was perhaps the personification of art and science together.

　　Yes we were wondering whether you wanted to clone him? I mean, why is it important to knowwhat his DNA was?

　　Let me give you one particular reason of interest to me and that’s visual acuity. Leonardo hadincredible eyesight. One might say he could see birds and flight if you look at his drawings ofbirds, if you look at his drawings of water and hydrodynamics. Well, ten or twenty years fromnow we could have some of Leonardo’s genes for vision. So I give that as one reason, butthere are others as well. His ancestry, his mother was a servant girl, perhaps even a slave,Katerina from the north of the black sea. We’d like to know more about his origins, thegenealogy of his mother and father.

　　This hybrid that created him obviously was very very special.

　　There’s also a bit of a historical question about where he was buried cuz there is a proposedsite, but it’s not a certain thing, right?

　　Correct, the last few years of his life, Leonardo worked quite happily for the King of France inAmboise in the Loire Valley, a very beautiful place. He died on either May 2nd or May 5th, 1519.He was buried only three months later in August. And then the tomb where he was presumablyburied was opened in the year 1802 and again in 1863. So because of the three-month hiatusbetween his death and the initial burial, and then the openings in 1802 and 1863, there arequestions about whether the bones in Ambois are those of Leonardo himself.

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