There are times that all you have to do to get a better understanding of a perplexing question, is to look at it from a different perspective.
Take Carl Webb for instance, since the claim that he was was first made, people have been queuing up with favourite theories and ideas on what they thought he was or did or even appeared. In reality what they were doing was addressing what they thought they knew.
As any seasoned researcher/investigator will tell you is there is a massive gap between the imagination and facts. Don't feel too bad if you've fallen into that trap, many have trod that same path ahead of you, in fact you might be surprised just who you would find amongst them. I have no problem in holding my hand up on that score but in my defence, it was more than 50 years ago as a young and super keen copper. I was soon and rather abruptly put right by my seniors and betters.
But back to Carl Webb and the headline for this post. I mention specifically 4 things we don't know but there are obviously many more. My concern relates more to 4 things about his description that we don't know but really should.
The claim by Professor Abbot that Carl was the Somerton Man was based on DNA analysis. That DNA came from a single rootless shaft of hair that the Professor had in his possession. More on that aspect later. What did that analysis tell us? Why, it told us that with some manipulation of the data, that hair was from a family named Webb and by a process of imputation and deduction as in because this particular man had not been heard of nor seen, since 1947 then he must therefore be the Somerton Man.
Did you spot what just happened here? No? Let's move on a little further to the post title. Just what are the 4 things that we should have known but don't?
DNA is an amazing thing, you can tell so many things from it, apart from your ancestry. Did you know that skilled analysts can tell amongst may other things, the following four items?
- Eye colour
- Hair colour
- Height
- Gender
3. Height: 5 Feet 11 inches
4. Male
In the case of the Somerton Man we also know a fifth and readily accessible/comparable thing, we know how many teeth he had lost.
For reasons best known to others, the DNA analysis on the rootless shaft of hair in the possession of Professor Abbott, did not address those 4 issues that we really could have and should have known about Carl Webb.
Matter of interest, Professor Abbott publicised his claim in an issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine dated in March 2023 I believe. In that article, there were some images from the 2012 exercise where hair samples were extracted and they were identified as being light brown and grey and in another instance the Somerton Man's hair was referred to as 'Mousey', plain old 'mousey' coloured hair. It was shortly after that in the same article that the Professor mentioned the single rootless shaft of hair. Harking back to my earlier comment, Did you spot what just happened here? LINK TO IEEE MAGAZINE
What a great pity it is that there was only one rootless shaft of hair to analyse. That means that there is no way that the DNA results from Astrea can ever be verified. Harking back to my earlier comment, Did you spot what just happened here?
The only way the Carl Webb claim can be established as being true, is via the Police Forensics team and their dedication to finding the truth and one senior Forensic officer made the statement that she thought it likely that the identity of the Somerton Man may never be known. Agreed.