Yap is a small island in Micronesia, some 1,100 miles north of Papua New Guinea in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Most likely you’ve never heard of it. First settled around 1500 BC by Polynesians who were miraculously navigating their way across thousands of miles of ocean at a time when most Europeans were barbarians living in huts, the Yapese developed a distinct culture from other neighboring islands, which was not uncommon given the neighboring islands were several hundred miles away. One interesting part of their culture was the constant feuding and intrigue between villages and individual families, which involved a complicated and constantly fluctuating caste system wherein those on top were given special privileges, like harvesting the more desirable fish from the ocean. Another interesting part is the fact that their money was rocks.
Now the Yapese used several things for money, including lengths of loincloth and ten feet long shell necklaces, but by far the most valuable were large chunks of quartz carved into discs with holes through the middle called rai. Now quartz does not naturally exist on Yap, which is probably why it was seen as being so damn valuable. The nearest source of quartz was the island of Palau, some 280 miles away. Yapese who wanted to get their hands on it had to sail there via outrigger and either barter for or steal it. If this sounds weird to you, right now would be a good time to remember that our entire monetary system used to be based on gold, which is just a rare shiny metal, so you know, pretty much exactly the same thing. Anyways, the value of the rai was based upon its size and how cool the story of getting it happened to be. Many of the rai were quite large, some three or four feet in diameter, hence the holes cut in them so they’d be easier to lug around. However, rather than constantly moving heavy rocks around for big transactions, the Yapese instead went with a system where everybody just kind of remembered what rocks belonged to what people. Again, this might sound weird, but this is pretty much how the modern banking system works, so if anything, the Yapese were ahead of their time.
Anyways, the first official contact with Europeans came when Spanish ships sailing to the Philippines from Mexico stopped at Yap in 1543. However, this was probably not the first contact given the Spanish were greeted by a Yapese speaking fluent Spanish. The Spaniards claimed the island for Spain, and then just left it alone, mostly because the Yapese weren’t all that welcoming. Numerous missionaries who visited the island to convert the Yapese to Christianity were either killed or forced to leave in a hurry. This was the state of affairs in 1871 when David O’Keefe became shipwrecked on the island. David was an Irishman who had emigrated to Georgia and was in the middle of captaining a voyage to China when his ship sank in a storm and he got washed up onto the beach. Now for whatever reason, the Yapese did not kill David, probably because he wasn’t spouting off about why his god was so much better than their gods, and instead they nursed him back to health and let him hang out until a passing ship could pick him up. During this time, David became quite intrigued by all the big chunks of quartz just lying around.
Now David might not have been much of a religious fellow, but he most certainly was a businessman who recognized an opportunity when he saw one. Soon after being rescued and taken to Hong Kong, David purchased himself a schooner and sailed to Palau, where he used modern tools, something the Yapese lacked, to cut a rai thirteen feet in diameter weighing some four tons. He then took it to Yap where the astounded Yapese more than happily traded a shit ton of coconuts and sea cucumbers for it, which he in turn took to Hong Kong where such things were considered delicacies, selling his cargo for a huge profit. David quickly became very wealthy, both in terms of his growing bank account in Hong Kong and as a man who could get as much damn quartz as he pleased on Yap. Building himself a large house on the island, he declared himself king, married two local women, and started pumping out children left and right. It’s worth noting that while all this was going on he had a wife and child in Georgia whom he never visited.
Over time, David’s scheme began to cause inflation on Yap. With so many very large stones becoming available, each successive stone delivered became worth less and less. However, David remained fat and happy in his personal kingdom until 1899 when Spain sold the island to Germany. The Germans, opting for a more hands on approach, set up a military barracks on the island and put David under house arrest in 1901, because if anybody was going to be making money off of a monetary loophole, it was going to be the Germans damn it. The Yapese did not like this turn of events, threatening a mass uprising unless David was released, which the Germans did after a tense standoff. Not feeling exactly safe, David fled with his favorite children soon after, but drowned when a typhoon struck his ship sailing back to Georgia. The Germans meanwhile, forced the Yapese to abandon pretty much all the cool parts of their culture, including the use of rai. In 1914, the Japanese took over the island and then in 1945 it was occupied by the United States. It later became part of the independent Federated States of Micronesia in 1986. Though superseded by modern paper currency, the rai continue to be exchanged for traditional and ceremonial purposes, such as marriages, land sales, or compensation for damages.