Pingelap
Template: Infobox Atoll / Maintenance / height Missing
Pingelap (also: Pelelap, Pingerappu To; outdated English: Musgrave or Mac Askill Iceland ) is a westpazifisches atoll with three main islands in the partial or Pohnpei State of the Federated States of Micronesia.
Geography
Pingelap represents the easternmost land mass of this Micronesian state of dar. Of these, 1.75 km ² of land and 1.20 km ² lagoon; the rest is occupied by the coral reef flooded. The specified with 29 km ² total area seems in comparison with the satellite image clearly excessive, the actual value is likely to move in five square kilometers. The small lagoon is divided into two basins. The deeper southeastern basin is up to 42 meters deep.
The atoll with islands Pingelap Iceland (southeast), Sukoru ( west) and Daekae (Northwest) is located 200 km east-southeast well Pohnpei and was discovered in 1793 by Thomas Musgrave. At that time it was inhabited for around 800 years. 1775 but fell ninety percent of the time about a thousand islanders Lengkieki the typhoon victims; most of the survivors died shortly thereafter of hunger because all vegetation including coconut trees, breadfruit trees and banana trees had been destroyed and therefore remained as the sole food source for the fish.
In his book The Island of the color-blind reports Oliver Sacks, starting from only 20 survivors, the population is gradually increased again, but in the fourth generation after this environmental disaster is a 've made "new" disease noticeable: " The first children with pingelapesischen eye disease were born, and in the course of a few generations, their number had risen to more than five percent of the population -. approximately the value at which it still is today, " population growth was vonstattengegangen not without inbreeding, with the result that certain genetic characteristics, which had until then been only rarely in appearance, were able to spread in the population. One of them led to a complete achromatopsia ( color blindness ): "The mutation that is responsible for achromatopsia, is likely already centuries earlier have occurred, but acted it is a recessive gene, and as long as the population was large enough was the probability that two carriers of this gene were married and that the disease was manifest in their children, very low. All this changed with the typhoon. "
Today, about a third of the population carries the genetic trait that leads to defective vision, and of the approximately 250 residents are about 75 color-blind. In other regions of the world, a case of color blindness comes to 30,000 inhabitants. However, the victims of the eye disease indicate, show it to them a variety of shades, contrasts and brightness, so when fishing, the color sighted escaping.
Since historical times Pingelap was divided into two districts, Likinepeng ( Lehpeng ) and Lepeir. Likinepeng is the main town of the atoll.