Yap Money

In August 1999 I visited Washington, D.C., with my family. One of the museums had a piece of stone money from the island of Yap. My wife Alejandra took a picture of me standing next to it, as you can see below. But the story doesn't end there...

When I talk about money in Principles of Economics (Econ 1 at Stanford University), I usually get into the functions and history of money, and among other things I mention the stone money of the island of Yap. I usually describe it, but I didn't have any pictures of it. So when I lectured in the fall quarter of 1999-2000, right after coming back from my trip, I decided to use the picture we took in Washington, D.C. I asked my AA, Carole King, to scan the picture into a jpeg image I could use in PowerPoint, and Carole quickly noticed that my picture was similar to a drawing in John Taylor's Economics textbook. As you can see below, my posture is strikingly (and unintendedly) similar to the aborigen standing next to the stone money.

I showed both pictures in succession in the lecture, and we had a good laugh out of it! I'm pretty sure the students will remember the stone money of Yap!