The Most Genetically Isolated People in History

The Most Genetically Isolated People in History What happens when a handful of people, cut off from the rest of the world, become the ancestors of an entire population? Something extraordinary, and often something dark. On one Pacific island, a whole community sees only in black and white. Tens of thousands of South Africans carry a "vampire" disease traced to a single marriage in 1688. An entire tribe once died of a laughing sickness spread through their own funerals. From six-fingered families to the Children of the Moon, these are the real, documented communities shaped forever by a few ancestors and one shared thread of DNA. We explore Pingelap, the island of the colorblind; the South African "vampire" bloodline; kuru, the laughing death of the Fore; the six-fingered Amish; the Colombian family with early Alzheimer's; the signing island of Martha's Vineyard; and the Guna "Children of the Moon." We think of ourselves as individuals. But so much of who we are was decided long ago, by a few ancestors we never met. 🔔 Subscribe for more of the strange, dark, and unbelievable truths behind the world you thought you knew. SOURCES & RESEARCH: Pingelap / achromatopsia — the ~1775 Typhoon Lengkieki reduced the island to ~20 survivors; a surviving carrier passed on complete achromatopsia (CNGB3 gene); ~10% of the island now has total colorblindness, locally called maskun; documented by Oliver Sacks in The Island of the Colorblind and Johns Hopkins genetics research Variegate porphyria in South Africa — the founder mutation (R59W, PPOX gene) traced to Gerrit Jansz and Ariaantje Jacobs, an orphan sent from Rotterdam, who married at the Cape in 1688; ~30,000–40,000 affected descendants over ~17 generations; the drug-triggered acute attacks; documented by Geoffrey Dean's genealogical studies and University of Cape Town porphyria research Kuru / the Fore people — the prion disease spread through funerary cannibalism (women and children consuming the brain of the dead);