Rai Stones
Stone Money; Rai (Yapese) or Fei (anachronistic) is a holder of value from Yap, a group of four main islands and a dozen islets, separated by narrow channels, surrounded by a broad, fringing platform reef in the Western Caroline Islands.
The value of the stone was traditionally understood or even comprised through its physical location and chain of ownership.
The Islands of Yap, and its Outer Islands, used a range of items for exchange, tribute and to store or represent value. These included sennet twine, woven cloth, turmeric, coconut oil, Spondylidae shells, mother-of-pearl shell, and the most valuable: stone money. The arduous process of navigation required to obtain the stones, which were hand-quarried of limestone in the Palau Islands, played a role in the value of each stone.
The stone money of Yap consists of massive limestone discs, many of them a foot thick and between seven and nine feet in diameter. They were quarried on Babeldaob in Palau, with a smaller number coming from Guam, and transported to Yap on native rafts. The value of one of these millstone, like coins, depends upon its history as well as upon its size, quality, color, shape, and age. Those quarried on Guam are more highly valued than those brought from Babeldaob.
For the majority of these stones, natives of Yap undertook an extremely hazardous 260-mile sea journey to Palau to acquire , of which they made the great stone discs that were the distinctive money of Yap. Arriving in Palau hungry and exhausted, they were permitted to quarry their stone from the coral reefs south of Babeldaob and were often required in return to gather firewood, carry water, build fish weirs, and act as fortune tellers, medical specialists, and magicians for their hosts.
The stones are situated on display outside native homes and community houses, flanked against the outer wall. Transactions involving stone money do not necessarily involve transportation of the stones themselves. The title to a stone is transferred, and this change is made public, but the stone may remain where it was. Stones remained in one place with transfer of ownership accomplished through public knowledge of the value, history, and title for each stone.
During the German Period, administrators made fines in stone money effective by marking the stones with black paint.
Western Interest
"His Majesty O'Keefe," a film loosely based on a pivotal early American trader who capitalized on Yapese esteem for stone money, was released in 1954 and starred Burt Lancaster.
Starting in the 1990, Milton Friedman and other western economists began studying Yapese stone money, and made detailed arguments from analogy about US monetary policy. Similarly, with introduction of crypto currencies, both supporters and detractors have looked the to the origin and evolution of Yapese stone money for lessons relevant to distributed public ledgers.
Texts Dealing with Stone Money
Dash, Mike. 2011. “David O’Keefe: The King of Hard Currency,” 2011. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/david-okeefe-the-king-of-hard-currency-37051930/.
Friedman, Milton. 1991. “The Island of Stone Money.” E-91-3. Working Papers in Economics. Palo Alto, CA.
Furness, William Henry. 1910. The Island of Stone Money, Uap of the Carolines. J.B. Lippincott. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Island_of_Stone_Money_Uap_of_the_Car.html?id=C6YTAAAAYAAJ.
Gentle, Paul F. 2021. “Stone Money of Yap as an Early Form of Money in the Economic Sense.” Financial Markets, Institutions and Risks 5 (2). https://doi.org/10.21272/fmir.5(2).114-119.2021.
Lee Gillilland, Cora C. 1975. “The Stone Money Of Yap: A Numismatic Survey.” 23. Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology. Washington, DC.
Schneider, David M. 1976. “ A Warning in Regard to The Stone Money of Yap .” American Anthropologist 78 (4). https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1976.78.4.02a00160.
“The Island of Stone Money.” 1915. The Economic Journal 25 (98). https://doi.org/10.2307/2222196.
