First Settlement of the Mariana Islands and Entry into Remote Oceania
- Date
- c. 1500 BCE
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- Mariana Islands, Micronesia, western Pacific
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
Around 1500 BCE, Austronesian voyagers departing from the northern or central Philippines reached the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, becoming the first humans to settle in Remote Oceania.
The crossing of roughly 2,300 kilometres of open sea was the longest ocean voyage yet undertaken in human history and the earliest of the great Austronesian expansions into the open Pacific, predating the later Lapita-driven settlement of the rest of Remote Oceania. Archaeological evidence at sites such as Unai Bapot on Saipan includes distinctive red-slipped, circle-stamped, and punctate-stamped pottery closely resembling Neolithic ceramics from the Philippine Cagayan Valley, anchoring the migrants' homeland in island Southeast Asia. Comparative linguistics linking the Chamorro language to the Philippine subgroup of Austronesian, together with mitochondrial DNA and whole-genome studies of the Chamorro people, independently corroborate this Philippine origin. The settlers carried cultivated plants, including rice, but apparently no domestic animals, reflecting a deliberate colonising voyage rather than accidental drift. This pioneering achievement established the ancestral Chamorro population and inaugurated the human peopling of the remote Pacific.
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Empires active in c. 1500 BCE
- New Kingdom of Egypt1550 BCE – 1077 BCE
- Hittite Empire1650 BCE – 1178 BCE
- Shang Dynasty1600 BCE – 1046 BCE
- Mitanni1500 BCE – 1300 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
Related exploration & colonisation events
- Lapita voyagers settle Tonga and Samoa: first peopling of Remote Oceaniac. 900 BCE
- Foundation of Carthage by colonists from Tyre814 BCE (traditional)
- Austronesian seaborne expansion out of Taiwanc. 3000 BCE
- Corinth founds Syracuse and the Greek colonisation of the Westc. 733 BCE
- Dmanisi: the earliest well-dated humans in Eurasiac. 1.8 million years ago
- Pre-Clovis America: Monte Verde and the Pacific coastal routec. 16,000–14,500 years ago
Further reading
The wider story
A History of the Pacific Islands
The standard accessible overview of Oceania from settlement to the modern era.
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