Bitcoin and the blockchain may seem like puzzling new technological standards. However, the principal guiding principle of this modern-day cryptocurrency goes back much longer than you might consider.
Strange as it may seem, bitcoin has a sort of bizarro historical analog in an ancient foreign money device dating back hundreds of years: giant stone disks referred to as rai, which were used long ago as a symbolic form of cash on the Micronesian island of Yap.
“They are one of the international’s most intriguing coins,” says the University of Oregon archaeologist Scott Fitzpatrick.
“Carved from limestone quarries in the Palau islands, a few 250 miles (four hundred km) from Yap, they’re the most important gadgets ever transported over the open Pacific Ocean during the pre-European touch generation.”
Those massive, heavy stone monuments (frequently taller than the people who own them) won’t look like they’ve lost. It is not unusual to have a virtual system of fees. This system is encrypted, intangible, and invisible to human senses.
But that bodily comparison masks the stunning shared function of Bitcoin and Rai—both kinds of foreign money rely on the public, community ledger system that provides transparency about transactions, safety, and all without needing a centralized financial institution.
In Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, that public ledger is called the blockchain: an open report of Bitcoin ownership and transactions spread across more than one computer on the net.
There has been an equally dependable predecessor to the blockchain ledger in Rai—the historical culture of the Yapese islanders, who used ample stone cash.
“Rai has been considered extraordinarily treasured, but given their length, weight, and relative fragility, they have been no longer usually moved after being located in a selected place,” Fitzpatrick and co-writer Stephen McKeon explain in a brand new study exploring the similarities.
“As a result, if a rai had been proficient or exchanged, the brand new proprietor(s) of a disk wouldn’t have lived near it. To ensure that possession was recognized and indisputable, an oral ledger became used within groups to keep transparency and security.”
According to the researchers, this oral ledger – told through tales shared by using the Yapese and handed down over generations – helped the network file and speak adjustments in ownership of the rai, such as wedding presents, political enticements, or maybe paying ransoms.
The things humans might use Bitcoin for nowadays are unique, but the most concerning issue regarding the two types of foreign money is how the ledger machine, in principle, plays the same function.
