Yap island's capital — stone money banks, manta ray cleaning stations, and the Pacific's most intact traditional culture
Colonia is the tiny capital of Yap State in the western Federated States of Micronesia — a cluster of low buildings around a harbour that serves as the administrative centre for an island whose traditional culture is among the most intact in the Pacific. Yap is famous for its rai (stone money) — large circular limestone discs quarried in Palau and transported by canoe to Yap, where they serve as a social currency (the largest weigh several tons and haven't moved in centuries). The traditional village of Bechiyal has a living men's peiy (men's house) and women's house complex and performs trad…
Yap's stone money system (rai) is one of the most distinctive economic practices ever documented — discs of aragonite limestone quarried on Palau's Rock Islands and transported over 450km of open Pacific on traditional canoes, whose value was determined by the social history of each disc's acquisition rather than its size. The system was documented by the American sea captain David Dean O'Keefe in the 1870s, who attempted to manipulate it for commercial advantage (a failed effort that nevertheless gave him legendary status in Yapese oral history). German, Japanese, and American administration…