On Island of the Colorblind, Paradise Has a Different Hue [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

An island in the Pacific has a unique genetic history that affects how it understands color.

By Daniel Stone
Photographs by Sanne De Wilde
PUBLISHED JANUARY 26, 2018

Pingelap Atoll, the Micronesian island in the South Pacific, sometimes goes by its other name, The Island of the Colorblind. That's the moniker Oliver Sacks assigned the island in his 1996 book that explored the human brain. Pingelap piqued the interest of Sacks and many other scientists for its strange genetic circumstance. According to legend, a devastating typhoon in 1775 caused a population bottleneck. One of the survivors, the ruler, carried a rare gene for a extreme type of colorblindness. Eventually, he passed the gene to the island's future generations.

Today, roughly 10 percent of the island's people are still believed to hold the gene for the condition, known as complete achromatopsia, a rate significantly higher than the 1 in 30,000 occurrence elsewhere in the world. But 10 percent is also low enough that the concept of color—and who can see it—has acquired new meaning among people in Pingelap.

More:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2018/01/pingelap-island-colorblindness-micronesia/