Yap island's Rai stones: giant limestone discs up to 12 ft across weighing 5,000+ lbs used as currency for ~500-600 years! 💰 Used to settle land disputes, marriages, peace agreements - ownership transferred by oral agreement. ~6,000 stones remain and system still used today!
Yap Rai Stones: Giant limestone discs used as currency for 600 years
PalauGeneral
Site mentioned
Key facts
- Giant limestone discs up to 12 feet across weighing up to 8,000 lbs
- Heaviest currency in the world
- Originated approximately 600 years ago from Palau limestone caves
- First western descriptions in Jesuit accounts from late 1600s
- Traded to settle land disputes, arrange marriages, and make peace
- Ownership transferred by oral agreement without moving the stone
- One stone lost at sea in storm still retains value because its story is known
- David O'Keefe in 1871 began quarrying stones using steel tools and schooners, inflating the economy
- German officials painted black crosses on stones as fines in 1899
- Approximately 6,000 Rai stones remain on Yap today
- System still used to mark births, deaths, and honor
Sources
The tiny island with human-sized money - BBCbbc.com
The Micronesian island of Yap has a famously unusual currency: hundreds of giant discs of rocks scattered all over the island, many of them ...
The Island Of Stone Money - NPRnpr.org
On the island of Yap, people used giant stone coins that weighed thousands of pounds. The island's story helps answer a fundamental economic ...
The History of Stone Money - Yap, Micronesia - Manta Ray Bay Resortmantaray.com
The US dollar is the common currency in Yap, but the stone money is still used to this day for major transactions like payment of dowry or purchase of land. One ...
Rai: big money - Bank of Canada Museumbankofcanadamuseum.ca
Rai are stone currency from the island of Yap in Micronesia. Also referred to as fei, they are all roughly the same design and come in a wide variety of sizes.
Hard currency: Stone money of the Yap Islands - HMNS Blogblog.hmns.org
Yap Islanders use stone and shells as currency, or more specifically, as an “exchange valuable” (Fitzpatrick 2003:67).
Was this story useful?
Keep exploring
Every site on this page sits on the globe, and the people who research them are on the Discord.
3D Globe · Sites by country · Story Archive · Research Library · Weekly Journal · Search
AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.