The natives of Yap had the NFT concept down hundreds of years ago: They are the ones who use large stone wheels as money. After a bit of this, they just started saying "the wheel in John's house is owned by Bob." Thus Bob had ownership even though he didn't have to move the physical token to his place.

In one case a stone wheel being transported between islands sank into the ocean. It did not matter, people just referred to that store of value as "john's stone, out there in the ocean somewhere".

The current method it's being done now is kind of a joke but that's the basic idea.