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Concept
History of Guam
Summary
The history of Guam starts with the early arrival around 2000 BC of Austronesian people ent American rule of the island began with the 1898 Spanish–American War. Guam's history of colonialism is the longest among the Pacific islands.
Austronesian peoplesMariana Islands#History and History of the Federated States of Micronesia
The Mariana Islands were the first islands settled by humans in Remote Oceania. Incidentally it is also the first and the longest of the ocean-crossing voyages of the Austronesian peoples into Remote Oceania, and is separate from the later Polynesian settlement of the rest of Remote Oceania. They were first settled around 1500 to 1400 BC by migrants departing from the Philippines.
Archeological studies of human activity on the islands has revealed potteries with red-slipped, circle-stamped and punctate-stamped designs found in the Mariana Islands dating between 1500 and 1400 BC. These artifacts show similar aesthetics to pottery found in Northern and Central Philippines, the Nagsabaran (Cagayan Valley) pottery, which flourished during the period between 2000 and 1300 BC.
Comparative and historical linguistics also indicate that the Chamoru language is most closely related to Indonesian Language Malayian subfamily of the Austronesian languages, instead of the Oceanic subfamily of the languages of the rest of Remote Oceania.
Mitchondrial DNA and whole genome sequencing of the Chamoru people strongly support an ancestry from the Philippines. Genetic analysis of pre-Latte period skeletons in Guam also show that they do not have Australo-Melanesian ("Papuan") ancestry which rules out origins from the Bismarck Archipelago, New Guinea, or eastern Indonesia. The Lapita culture itself (the ancestral branch of the Polynesian migrations) is younger than the first settlement of the Marianas (the earliest Lapita artifacts are dated to around 1350 to 1300 BCE), indicating that they originated from separate migration voyages.
Nevertheless, DNA analysis also show close genetic relationship between ancient settlers of the Marianas and early Lapita settlers in the Bismarck Archipelago.
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