Yapese Rai Stone Money and the Sawei Tribute Network
- Date
- c. 1400 CE
- Category
- Economy & trade
- Region
- Yap and the Caroline Islands, western Micronesia (Oceania)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
Around 1400 CE the island of Yap in the western Caroline Islands developed one of the world's most distinctive monetary and exchange systems, anchored by rai stones, large carved disks of crystalline calcium carbonate (calcite) valued as currency.
Yapese seafarers undertook hazardous voyages of roughly 400 kilometres to the Palauan archipelago to quarry and shape the disks, the largest exceeding three metres across (the biggest surviving stone is about 3.6 m in diameter), then ferried them home on canoes and rafts; radiocarbon chronologies tentatively place the origin of the formalised rai system near AD 1400. A stone's worth depended on its size, craftsmanship, and especially its history, the lives lost or labour expended in its acquisition, allowing wealth to circulate without the object physically moving. Parallel to this currency, Yap stood at the centre of the sawei, a hierarchical inter-island tribute and exchange network linking the paramount chiefs of the Gagil district with a chain of low-lying Caroline atolls. Outer islanders periodically sailed to Yap to render tribute of textiles, mats, turmeric, and shell valuables and to attend ritual obligations, receiving in return canoes, food, prestige goods, navigational support, and protection, especially relief after typhoons. Together the rai economy and the sawei sustained an enduring regional order sometimes called the Yapese Empire that structured Micronesian politics until the colonial era.
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Empires active in c. 1400 CE
- Malacca Sultanate1400 CE – 1511 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
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- Great Zimbabwe rises as a stone city on the gold trade13th–14th centuries CE
- Rise of the Hanseatic Leaguec. 1159
- Song China issues jiaozi, the world's first government paper money1023 CE
Further reading
The wider story
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