A little wonder, every day
Stone money that can stay in place
Documentary photograph of a large rai stone on Yap.
On the Micronesian island of Yap, rai are stone disks with a central hole. Large examples could weigh tonnes. They were not convenient small change: large rai were used for important social and ceremonial transfers of value rather than carried for everyday shopping. [1, 2]
Remarkably, transferring ownership did not necessarily require moving the stone. A disk could remain in place while the community acknowledged its new owner. For this money, the physical object mattered alongside shared knowledge of who owned it. Not all rai were enormous: much smaller ones existed too. [1, 3]