On Yap, a family stayed rich for generations on a stone coin lying at the bottom of the sea

Yap's stone money, called rai or fei, is carved limestone wheels from a foot to about twelve feet across, quarried in Palau and brought back by canoe and raft. Ownership passes by agreement. A large stone stays where it stands after a sale, and the new owner relies on everyone knowing it is his. The American writer W. H. Furness, in a book published in 1910, was told of a family in a nearby village whose wealth no one doubted, though no one in the family had ever seen it. An ancestor had cut an enormous stone in Palau. On the voyage home a storm forced the crew to cut the raft loose, and the stone sank. The crew testified to its size and quality and that it was lost through no fault of its owner. For two or three generations it had lain on the sea floor, and the family was still counted rich on it. When the German administration fined chiefs for not repairing roads, officials painted black crosses on their most valuable stones. The roads were repaired, the crosses were scrubbed off, and the fine was paid. A 1929 Japanese census counted 13,281 stones; about half were destroyed in the Second World War. The anthropologist David Labby recorded stone money passing at marriages and staying with the estate. In modern Yap it has served as collateral for dollar loans.