The Island of Yap and The Idea of Money
Beneath the tropical glare of the South Pacific sun, the riches of the island of Yap shone in massive white discs as bright as the moon. Each family fortune stood in the tropical sands between the coconut groves and waving grasses. Multi-ton, polished limestone wheels, called rai, that broadcast their owner’s status like a modern day yacht in a driveway, parked next to their pet tiger. There was no gold to be found on Yap, or silver, or jem stones. The stone wheels, some up to eight tons, were all the treasure the island had. They had no spiritual or practical function. You couldn’t build a home, produce food, or navigate the seas with one. You couldn’t chip a piece off of them for everyday purchases like food or supplies. However, the destinies of most Yapese were decided by these big rocks. They funded wars, cemented alliances, and procured territory. Uncounted numbers died in their creation and transportation. So it had been for centuries, when the rai first arrived on Yap.
According to legend, long ago a Yapese navigator went off course and found himself 250 miles away from his home on the previously uncontacted island of Palau. Dragging his canoe ashore, the sailor stood transfixed by the milky white crystalline cliffs shining bright above him. They were breathtaking. Captivating. Unlike anything he had ever seen on Yap. He had to have a part of them to bring back.
Inspiration struck.
With stone tools and sea-shells, he carved a whale, or rai, from the stone to commemorate his voyage. Midway through carving his sculpture, he realized that he’d have to move it by himself onto his bamboo canoe for the hundreds of miles journey home. He would require another souvenir tactic. One night, as he was looking up at the milky white moon shining bright above him, inspiration struck again.
Wheels are easier to move than whales.
So he carved a big round disc with a hole in the center that he could put a branch through and rolled it onto his boat.
The BBC tells different rai origin story. According to one expert, it wasn’t just one navigator, and the crew managed to transport the whale statue back to Yap. However, further expeditions to Palau did run into said whale sculpture transport issue, and thus rai became stone circles.
Either way, once the sailor or sailors returned to the shores of Yap, the first rai caused a sensation. Everyone wanted their own. Demand skyrocketed for this rare treasure. Men set out to Palau to seek their fortune. Chiefs sent other men out to Palau to seek the chief’s fortune.
Soon an industry and an economy grew around the circles of big shiny rock. Only chieftains could authorize new expeditions for rai, retaining all of the larger stones their crews brought back to Yap, and collecting a tax of two fifths of the smaller ones. They also took control of the rai production, keeping the value high by restricting the number of stones in circulation. However, the chiefs had little influence over a rai’s individual worth. This was determined collectively by the islanders based on a loosely agreed upon and widely accepted set of factors.
Primarily, how many people died getting the rock back to Yap.
Size played the second most important indicator of value, as rai could vary in diameter from the palm of one’s hand to a modern tractor tire. By early 20th century accounts, a rai the width of a cafe table top could fetch 50 baskets of food or a full-sized pig, while a stone the size of a man would have been worth “many villages and plantations.” Other determiners of the rock wheel’s worth included the intricacy of it’s carvings, the difficulty in quarrying it, and the quality and shine of its polish. The most valuable rai would be bequeathed names based on the chief who decreed the voyage, or the bamboo canoe that brought it in. In short, a small rock could be worth far more than a hut-sized one based on its name brand, shininess, and body count.
Being so valuable, the rai couldn’t be used for everyday transactions. For those, the Yapese would exchange pearl shells or woven mats, or barter with coconut meat, taro, or cups of syrup. Instead, the gleaming rocks were exchanged to cement alliances between chiefs battling rival tribes. They could be gifted in a dowry, exchanged for land or fishing rights, or used to settle a debt if you fell into dire straits.
For example, if a member of your family killed a neighbor’s relative, the following conversation could occur:
“Your brother killed my cousin! I demand your brother’s life in exchange!”
“No, I love my brother! It’s not his fault! What if I give you all my wealth instead?”
“Ok. Instead, I’ll be rich now!”
And here is where rai diverge from most forms of currency. The rai didn’t move to the yard of the bereaved family. It wasn’t worth the manpower and organization to transport it. While some could be carried by coconut rope strung through the center, others were the weight of two cars and required entire crews to move. So by necessity it stayed in the murderer’s family’s yard, but it was now the neighbor’s coin. The ownership was transferred mentally and agreed upon collectively by the tribe. To the murderer’s family, they now had as much of a claim on the rai beside their hut as they did the moon in the sky.
This concept of ownership was so strongly ingrained in Yapese culture that not even distance or visibility affected it. In a famous legend, a tribesman seeking his fortune braved the seas to carve out a stone coin from Palau, only to lose it as his ship wrecked in a storm. Upon arriving back on Yap atop the tatters of his ship, he informed the tribe
“My wealth is at the bottom of the sea now.”
And everyone replied “Still good. Welcome home, newly rich person!”
This system remained unchanged until Western contact.
The rai’s gradual transition from riches to relics began when the Irish American Captain David O’Keefe washed ashore on Yap in the late 19th century. By then, the quarrying and transportation of rai had reached its peak. A British naturalist would report seeing 400 Yapese men producing stones on Palau, which at the time was more than 10% of the island’s adult male population.
The hospitable Yapese nursed the shipwrecked O’Keefe back to health and sent him on his way. In gratitude, he returned to the island with modern sailing ships. In exchange for coconut meat, he brought metal tools from Asia to modernize the rai quarrying and finishing, and Western ships to transport them. This earned O’Keefe his own island.
However, this influx of new rai threw off the carefully regulated supply and demand curve on Yap. Numerous twelve foot diameter stones could now be easily cut with iron tools and transported back in greater numbers than ever before with little risk of harm for the crew. Rai went from being relatively rare on the island in 1840 to over 13,000 on the island in the early 19th century. This only made the original, rough-hewn stones more valuable. The larger, metal polished rai were dwarfed in value by the older rocks that were laboriously carved with shell tools, rowed across the sea in bamboo canoes, and racked up high casualty figures along the way.
The importation of rai ended in 1898 when the Germans purchased the island from Spain following the Spanish American war.
The Germans were in need of roads built across their newly acquired territory for their vehicles. They ordered the Yapese to build them. The chiefs of Yap pointed to the rough dirt paths snaking their way across the island.
“We have them already.”
“No, real roads!” The Germans demanded.
The Yapese chiefs shrugged. “Nah, these are good.”
The Germans knew they couldn’t build the roads on their own, but what could they use for leverage? After much deliberation, they decided on economic pressure. They gathered the chiefs together and threatened to remove the rai until the roads were built.
The Yapese chiefs shrugged. “Go ahead and try.”
The Germans knew the Yapese had a point. Their colonial buildings on Yap were too small to store all of the island’s treasure. They couldn’t load multi-ton rocks into their ships without sinking them, which technically wouldn’t affect the value of the coins for the Yapese. Even if the ships made it across the ocean, there was no established market for shiny stone wheels in Germany. The Germans were at a loss. Then, one day, while staring at the milky white crystaline discs that shone bright like the moon, inspiration struck.
They took some black paint and drew German crosses on all the coins.
“These are Germany’s now.” They declared.
And the island of Yap collectively gasped “We’re bankrupt!”
The newly impoverished Yapese frantically set to work building the roads. Level and constructed to the German’s approval, the roads spread from one end of the island to the other “like park drives.” Satisfied, the Germans took a rag and wiped the black paint off the big rocks.
And the people of Yap collectively cheered “Our money is back!”
The Germans banned the importation of rai after this. Today, the stone coins still litter the island, serving as important cultural touchstones in this age of digital banking.
If the story of Yap seems especially odd, take the following example into consideration.
In the 1930s, France decided to buy some of the United State’s gold supply to help their economy. This caused an enormous uproar. Investors were panicked at what the loss of this valuable treasure could mean. National headlines declared that France was draining the US gold reserves. Despite the global economic crisis and public outcry, the two nations reached an agreement and the deal went through.
As stipulated in this international exchange of wealth, a US government employee walked into a room in the New York Fed, took some gold out of a drawer, and moved it to another drawer in the same building. Now that gold was France’s.
And an ocean away from their box of shiny metal bars, France collectively said “We’re rich now.”
In the minds of the Western countries, they were.
Where not otherwise cited, the source for this essay comes from the Planet Money Podcast — Episode 235: A Giant Stone Coin at The Bottom of The Sea.
If you’d like to read more of my writing, my book Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains is available on Amazon
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