A well developed culture is exemplified by the Latte Culture (Latte Stones are believed to be house foundations for upper class members of the communities). The complexity of the latte quarrying and installation (some stones weighed several tons and were carried several miles from the quarry to the house site) indicated complex and prosperous social systems.

By the time Magellan touched on Guam in 1521, the latte sites were no longer in use and it appears that the people had forgotten their origins.

Magellan's contact, under unfortunate circumstances, was brief and violent. The islands were later called the Islas de los Ladrones (Islands of Thieves), a name which stuck until 1668 when the first Spanish missionary, Fr. Sanvitores, set up the first European colony on Guam.

The Spanish operation on Guam led to conflict with the islanders over several decades. It is believed that there were 50,000 islanders at the beginning of European contact and only 1,500 - 2,000 by the year 1720.

The remaining islanders, now called Chamorros, intermarried with the Spanish garrisons made up of Mexicans, Tagalogs and Spanish troops. Nearly all of them had been moved to Guam during the fighting when the survivors became fervent Catholics.

In the early 1800's a group of Carolinians were allowed to settle on Saipan and formed the base of the second indigenous ethnic group in the Northern Marianas.

After the Spanish/American War in 1898, Spain sold all of the islands except Guam (captured and claimed by the U.S.) to Germany. The Germans, never more than 20 officials in all of the islands, introduced scientific agriculture and the western concept of land ownership.

Japan captured the islands from Germany in 1914 as World War I opened in Europe. Japan settled thousands of civilians in the islands (20,000 in the Northern Marianas alone) who were primarily engaged in commercial fishing and sugar cane production.

The islands became crucial to the Pacific Theater in World War II and some of the bloodiest battles of the war were fought in the Marianas between American and Japanese troops. The only atomic weapons ever to be used in warfare were launched by B29s taking off from the island of Tinian in August of 1945. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the American Navy administered the islands until they were turned over to the United Nations as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

Under the principles of the Trusteeship Agreement and American administration, the islands gradually regained their rights to self-government and the Northern Marianas chose to become a part of the American political family by popular vote in 1975. The rest of the Trust Territory, administered as a single unit since 1947 divided into the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau.