Rai Stones: The Mysterious Currency of Yap Island

[00:00:00]today's video is sponsored by mine the smart data assistant find out more later in the video hey 42 here for tens of thousands of years money in one form or another has been making the world go round enabling neighboring communities to trade with one another giving individuals an entirely new way of gathering wealth and facilitating the expansion of countless empires throughout history nobody knows exactly when money first came onto the scene because its origin predates written history for a long time anthropologists assumed money was invented as a replacement for bartering but it turns out that in the entire history of our species there is no hard evidence whatsoever for the existence of a society that relied on barter as the only means of exchanging goods and that actually makes a lot of sense because when you think about it bartering is a terrible way of doing business for a successful barter to take place you're going to have to rely on what economists call a double coincidence of wants or in normal person words not only does the individual you're trying to barter with need to have whatever item it is you want you also need to have whatever item it is that they want it's no surprise then our ancient ancestors needed a better way of doing business it may be that the use of money first arose as a way for ancient humans to deal with times when food was scarce for example when prey species migrated or forageable foods were out of season money allowed neighbouring tribes who may have specialized in hunting different species to trade with one another when times were tough helping both parties thrive of course the kind of money we're talking about here didn't much resemble what your local atm might spit out today long before we had the technology to mint coins commodity money was the only show in town currency has changed a lot throughout history and do you know what the most valuable currency is today it's your data that's right companies that you may have only used once a few years back are getting rich from the data you gave them for free that's why recently i've been using mine a personal data service that helps you to discover and track your digital footprint and also helps you to remove your personal data from platforms and services that you no longer use or no longer want to be affiliated with this minimizes your digital risks and online exposure to avoid future data breaches before they happen so let's have a look at all the companies that have my data according to mine whoa 1327 companies have my data apparently i've been a busy boy so let's see who's got my info hmm i don't use outbrain anymore and i don't want them to have my data let's take a closer look at what data they have of mine so they have my financial data as well as my email address i'm going to reclaim that with mine you can automatically send the data deletion request to the company from your inbox let's go ahead with that and there we go it's as simple as that the security of your personal data is really important after using mine i'm confident that i have better control of my data than ever before and i want you to have that feeling too so be sure to visit samemind.com today the links in the description below to find out where all of your data is and how to reclaim it and mine is still free to use for now soon it'll be a subscription service so be sure to get your foot in the door today commodity money can be made up of any high demand item that has intrinsic value of some kind things like peppercorns tea shells and silk have all been used as a form of commodity money in the past in italy parmesan cheese has been used as a collateral for bank loans and for a period in medieval england 40 sticks of eels could pay your rent for a year prisons have long been something of a breeding ground for new kinds of commodity money because inmates in most countries aren't allowed to possess cash cigarettes are the classic example but more recently ramen noodles have become increasingly popular as has drug-free urine i should stress these kinds of commodity money really are only usable in prisons i tried paying for my sunday morning paper with a litre of high quality drug-free urine just the other day and the lady behind the counter called the police arguably one of the most bizarre currencies of all time are the rise stones found on the yap islands in micronesia these stone coins are circular in shape with a hole cut through the middle which may not sound too dissimilar to those lovely shiny discs you find down the back of your settee but rhinestones have one significant difference they're absolutely bloody massive the biggest measure up to four meters in height and weigh 4 000 kilograms that's about as much as your average male asian elephant and even the smallest are around 30 centimeters across these coins were so large it wasn't uncommon for them to capsize the boats used to transport them and once back on land it could take upwards of a hundred men to deliver them to their intended destination according to local folklore the stones were first created as a result of an economic trade between two sets of islanders the story goes that 500 years ago a yappies navigator called anagamang led a small group of men on an expedition to the neighbouring island of palau around 200 miles away when they arrived they were in awe of palau's abundance of calcite a type of limestone which glistens in the sun this sparkly stone enchanted the yappies with its magical aura and so an agreement was made with the palawans that the people of yap could help themselves to as much limestone as they wanted in return for certain goods and services anagamang ordered his men to carve the limestone into the shape of fish and crescent moons but he soon realized circles were far more convenient when it came to transporting the large pieces of rock the hole in the center was added so that the stone could be slipped onto a log of some kind making transportation easier still to begin with rye stones were little more than giant souvenirs to show off to the people back home but soon the stones evolved into a new and exciting kind of currency that could be used during important social transactions like marriages and political deals or even to purchase food you might be wondering how exactly the yappies made this system work considering the somewhat inconvenient near immovable weight of their pockets change did every yappies own a house-sized piggy bank and horse-drawn wallet i wish the answer was yes but the yappies came up with a far simpler solution once a rye stone reached its destination it stayed there forever even if a trade was made and ownership of a stone changed the stone itself would remain exactly where it had been placed after arriving on the island this even extended to those stones which had capsized boats and sunk to the bottom of the ocean the submerged stones didn't lose their value and could still be traded by word of mouth of course a great deal of honesty was required in order for the system to function smoothly transactions of unseen rise stones would only take place if the islander in question was considered a well-respected member of the community and if the oral history of the particular stone was well established after all it wouldn't have been hard for some bright spark to start bragging about his incredible wealth in rhinestones that had all been conveniently lost at sea the value of each rye stone wasn't just determined by its size many other factors were taken into consideration including how difficult it had been to obtain the rock used to make the stone the quality of the carving was also key as was the reputation of its craftsman finally a stone's worth could be affected by the transaction it was being used for meaning it could be worth one thing for a wedding and another for an inheritance when irish american sailor david o'keefe arrived at the yap islands in 1871 he was immediately enchanted by what he saw and in particular the rye stones in fact he was so fond of the yap islands that he cleared his busy schedule and stayed there for the next 30 years o'keefe saw an opportunity where others had just seen ridiculously large stone coins he swaggered into town like a rhiestone cowboy i'm so sorry and unlike westerners before him he embraced island culture he even introduced the yapis to more advanced tools which made the process of creating grystones easier than ever before o'keefe set himself up as a trader and soon established a reputation that became known halfway across the pacific he went on to acquire his own private tropical island where he lived with multiple yappies wives something he presumably didn't mention to his wife back home in america he was still waiting patiently for him to return as it happened o'keefe never made it back home his journey from yap ended in tragedy when his ship was wrecked in a typhoon and he was never seen again his 30-year stay on the island irrevocably changed yap and his presence there is still remembered by the islanders today but in spite of o'keeffe's good intentions the tools he introduced ultimately ended up having a damaging effect on the yappies economy seeing as a stone's worth was largely dependent on how difficult it had been to obtain the new stones didn't carry anywhere near the same value as the old blood sweat and tear stones that had been mined in the years before o'keeffe's arrival somewhat ironically the giant currency of yap began to experience inflation but not even a rapid reduction in purchasing power could knock the world's largest currency out of its stride in fact remarkably enough rye stones are used as currency by the yappies for certain special transactions to this day though regular money is used for everyday purchases it's pretty incredible that such an unusual not to mention impractical approach to money has somehow stood the test of time when literally thousands of other historical currencies have fallen by the wayside but then again maybe we shouldn't underestimate the ingenuity of rye stones i mean the concepts they're based on are actually surprisingly advanced in fact when you think about it rye stones have a lot more in common with bitcoin than they do with the loose change in your pocket i know i know that sounds mental but hear me out both bitcoin and rhystones rely on a ledger system to ensure the transparency and security of transactions with bitcoin this ledger is known as the blockchain a secure public record of each and every transaction that has ever been made rye stones use a very similar system though this time through word of mouth a ceremonial gathering takes place whenever ownership of a stone changes hands where island chiefs announced a transaction to their subjects preventing stones from being wrongfully traded with both rye stones and bitcoins all of this happens without the use of a centralized banking system which other forms of currency are dependent on giving the people the power to maintain the economy we think of these as very contemporary ideas but the yappies were using them half a millennium ago we even talk about people mining for bitcoins just as the yappies mined for calcite on the island of palau 500 years ago you know what screw dogecoin i'm off to huddlesome rye stone thanks for watching