In Papua New Guinea, money is not as plentiful as sand, but it is found near the sea. Here, shell money is the official means of payment. The currency has some advantages over the euro and the dollar: it is counterfeit-proof, stable against inflation and, above all, it is peace-making.

Time has not stood still in Papua New Guinea. Bank cards, mobile phones and the internet are the great successes in modern times on the island of New Britain, which was part of a German colony in the eastern part of what is now Papua New Guinea from 1884 to 1914. But shell money is not an anachronism or relic from the Stone Age. Appearances are deceptive, but the shell never is. And even more: while capitalism divides many supposedly progressive societies, shell money is the cement in society for the Tolai people in Papua New Guinea.

Strictly speaking, the shell money of the Tolai is not shell money at all, but snail money, because the local currency is made from the shells of a small species of sea snail, the nassa snail (Nassarius arcularius). But the term ‘shell money’ has caught on, both in English and in German (German: Muschelgeld).

The locals thread the snail shells onto plant fibres. The whole family often helps to make the strings, some of which are metres long. Arm lengths serve as units: from hand to elbow, from hand to shoulder, from hand to opposite shoulder and from hand to opposite hand. A pokono, for example, also called a fathom after the nautical length measurement, corresponds to the distance from fingertip to fingertip along the outstretched arms of an adult. It contains about 320 mollusc shells.

The money, which the locals call tambu or tabu, has probably been in use for centuries. The Tolai, an ethnic group of about 120,000 people who migrated from the neighbouring island of New Ireland to the Gazelle Peninsula in eastern New Britain in the mid-18th century, still pay for fruit, vegetables, eggs, fish, meat and betel nuts with shell money at the markets. They also use it to pay bride prices and make amends. Strings of shell money accumulated over the lifetime of the deceased are distributed at their funerals.

“Tabu is a means of payment or exchange and a gift at the same time,” according to the German ethnologist Sigrun Preissing. In 2009, she published the book Exchange, give, money? Economic and social counter-designs. She is still working on alternative forms of economy today. A sweet potato, an egg or a fish can have different prices in the markets of Kokopo and Rabaul, the two largest settlements on the Gazelle Peninsula, despite being the same size, weight and quality – depending on who sells them and who buys them.

“For the Tolai, it is not a matter of exchanging conclusively, equivalently, but of making an exchange of unequal things possible in the first place and cultivating relationships at the same time”, says Preissing. “When we buy a loaf of bread at the bakery in this country, there is an unspoken agreement that the bread is worth three euros. Everyone who has enough money gets it for the same price. By putting three euros on the counter and receiving the bread in return, the exchange is complete. I never have to go to that baker again.” The barter situation at the Tolai market, on the other hand, is completely different, she says. “None of the participants have the idea that the amount of shell money and the items to be exchanged must have the same value.” Rather, it is an agreement, established by social rules, where the items can be exchanged by a certain person of a certain rank or role with another person.