One region of Micronesia has the world's highest rate of colour blindness, while another boasts of having invented central banking. Centuries ago near here, people built a huge temple and canal complex which had been abandoned by the time Europeans arrived.

The 16-nation South Pacific Forum will meet in the island of Pohnpei, one of the four states -- making up the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). The three other states are Chuuk, Kosrae, and Yap.

Yap has long featured in Believe it or not trivia for its huge stone money which was actually quarried in Palau to the south. Chiefs would commission the minting of a coin and men would sail there to collect it.

Some of the money never made it, falling from the boats into the world's deepest ocean. But in their form of central banking the chiefs who knew where the coin was still honour itsexistence and pay traditional debts with it.

Nan Madol near here is part of another mystery. The ruins are similar to Rapanuior Easter Island where chiefs ultimately destroyed the environment by building hundreds of moai or busts.

Around 1100 to 1200 AD, chiefs began building Nan Madol with basalt from volcanoes which had dried into hexagonal columns. Each column averaging around 50 tonnes and was taken from a quarry to the site by raft.

Micronesian legends suggest that darkness and violence are associated with Nan Madol, which these days is visited only by the few tourists who arrive here. Locals avoid the place.

On the atoll of Pingelap around 10 per cent of the population suffers achromatism -- true colour blindness. Worldwide, the condition affects only one person in every 33,000. Its sufferers have a painful hypersensitivity to light.

New York neurologist Oliver Sacks said the problem arose from a typhoon around 1775 which left only 20 people alive. He said the population quickly builtup. ``It was heroic breeding with perhaps a degree of incest'', but the surviving paramount chief carried the recessive gene for colour blindness.

FSM was first colonised by the Spanish, then the Germans, and the Japanese. The United States occupied it after World War II and it became a United Nations Trust Territory.

The country, with a population estimated at 1,06,000, became independent in 1991 but has inherited its share of western problems.

Micronesians are killing themselves on a diet of western junk food, and the children despite a lush environment have the world's worst rates of vitamin A deficiency.

The modern diet here is fatal, says Rod Jackson of the University of Auckland School of Medicine.

Micronesians eat corned beef, turkey tails, chicken and mutton, and almost totally ignore fresh food. ``The pigs are better fed than the people,'' Jackson said after completing a World Health Organisation study.

``We are dumping cheap food on them and while they like it, we are exploiting them.Dietary genocide might be a bit extreme but people are literally eating themselves to death...''

Pohnpeians are also heavy consumers of sakau, the local form of the intoxicating kava beverage. It has produced psychomotor retardation in much of the male population -- which can be seen in the slow driving, common here. People also suffer ichthyosis or fish skin from the sakau.

The islands also suffer economic and social problems. The US State department in its human rights report on FSM says spousal abuse and child neglect is rising as traditional extended families change.

``Effective prosecution of such offenses is rare,'' the report said.