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Some of the larger stones
have shared ownership, accounted for either mentally or by marking off the
shares different families own. During World War I, Yap was briefly occupied
by Germany. When the locals refused to pay "taxes," German
officials painted parts of some stones to identify them as German property.
Yapese "taxpayers" quickly ransomed these "coins" by
surrendering parts of their harvests of coconuts, copra, and fish.
The stones have some
advantages over conventional money. Most have long histories well known to
all the locals and each is somewhat unique, so theft is rare. The Yap money
supply is easily the most stable anywhere in the world---despite demands
from foreign collectors and museums, about 6,600 of the stones remain on
the island. But there are disadvantages. Conventional bankers are unwilling
to deal with the stones, so stone money cannot earn interest.
Chipped or cracked
stones that can be repaired are sculpted into smaller, less valuable pieces
of money. An irreparably broken stone, however, loses all value, so most sit propped up
alongside the owners' homes or in rows at the local "bank" for
decades---or even centuries, although they can be moved when ownership
changes hands by putting logs through their center holes and lifting or
rolling them. Once, while being ported between islands, a giant stone
slipped over the side of an outrigger canoe into deep water. Nevertheless,
it continued to count in trades for decades, but at a discount. People knew
its location and that it was intact; that they could not put their hands on
it was almost irrelevant. Mental accounting kept track of its ownership,
much as ownership of the gold bars formerly used by the United States in
its international transactions was once transferred, unseen, while
remaining deep in the vaults at Fort Knox.
Outsiders might view
the Yapese as naively relying on a primitive system to keep track of money,
but is our banking system really so different? After all, most Americans keep the bulk
of our money in banks, stored as electronic blips in a computer. We never
really see much of our money, nor does it truly exist in a physical sense.
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