The stones are valuable to the islander because it is their version of gold and silver. Unlike the rest of the world that use paper money, the people of Yap use the stones as a medium of exchanging of goods due to the fact that it is pretty. Since a piece of stone was so valuable, the islanders use it mostly for the purchase of rights like a daughter’s dowry. It could also be used to exchanges for food, pay loans, or ransom. I think that giant stones as money are strange because it is heavy, weighting more than a car and kind of hard to tell who has the possession of the stone. In fact, the stones does not change hands at all since it is kind of like abstract money. One person would give the stone to another and the islanders would know who