Guam – First settled by ocean voyagers around 1500 BC
Around 1500 to 1400 BC, seafarers from the Philippines reached Guam and the Mariana Islands – the first settlement of Remote Oceania and the longest ocean crossing of the early Austronesian voyages. Later waves arrived from the Caroline Islands and Island Southeast Asia, and these settlers became the Chamorro people, whose belief in the ancestral spirits, the taotao mo’na, endures today.
Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition reached the island in 1521, beginning a long period of Spanish rule, before Guam came under the United States in 1898. Today Guam, with its capital Hagåtña, is a multiethnic island and the largest in Micronesia, where Chamorro culture remains a proud part of daily life.
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