The most important “change” at many natives from New Guinea and on the Philippines are also today still the Kauri shell (Cypraea moneta).
The saved kauris is converted partly again to decoration in the form of volumes, chains, u.ä and carried at head, neck, arms, for legs or around the body, mixed often with beetle wings, feathers/springs, ossicle, animal and people teeth, multicolored stones or glass beads.
The wealth of the particular thus e.g. placed in New Guinea openly to look.
Dealers cover themselves on the markets of the cities and villages at the seacoasts with the shells and over further middlemen arrive these at the mountain peoples.
Many Papuas in remote mountain areas trust this “shell currency” often more, than the aimed money of the government.