The  geologic event  forming the Mariana's archipelago occurred during the Eocene epoch, a time when dinosaurs  had  already become extinct, plants, fishes and invertebrate mammals had developed, and the major mountains of the world had begun to  rise. Man would not appear for another 25 to 50 million years, a period so distant from  the  present as to equal 350,000 to 700,000 human life spans.

The early history of  the  Mariana Islands, is shrouded in the mists of antiquity  but it is believed that the islands were first settled  around  3,000 B.C. by an ancient  seafaring  people,  prehistoric  "Stone  Age Vikings",  who journeyed in outrigger canoes  and eventually  lost  their navigational skills and were marooned. It is believed  that  they  sailed across  the  vast  expanse of the open Pacific, north  and  eastward from southeast Asia, possibly from what is now known as Indonesia. The people, who  became  known as  Chamorros, developed unique construction skills which permitted them to carve huge, mushroom-like capped pillars of stone from solid rock known today as Latte or Taga Stones. Their precise use remains one of the great mysteries of the Pacific to this day.

Ferdinand  Magellan  sighted  the  islands in March 1521, when he made his landfall at Guam. He claimed the islands for Spain and  first christened the  archipelago  "Las  Isles  de las Velas Latinas"  (The Islands of the Latine Sails), because the triangular shape of the sails used  on  native  canoes were similar to those used on Mediterranean vessels. In 1668 their name  was  changed a third time to Las Mariana's  in  honour  of Mariana of Austria,  widow  of  Philip IV  of  Spain. Through  an  act of genocide committed  in  the 17th century by Spanish colonists  against  the  local  inhabitants the Chamorro race was almost wiped  out and today the Chamorros on Rota are the least mixed in the Mariana's.  In 1815 a new wave of  people  from  atolls  west  and  north of Truk (Chuuk) in the Eastern Carolines migrated to Saipan. The Carolinians managed Spanish cattle herds and maintained a presence in the Mariana's at a time when Spain was concerned over German intentions in the area.  

After Pope Leo XIII declared Spain's sovereignty over the Mariana's in 1885, the now Hispanicized Chamorros were encouraged to move back to the Northern Mariana's from Guam. They were given farmland, but by that time the Carolinians had already settled much of the best coastal land. The  islands  were sold by Spain to Germany in 1899 and so remained under the German flag until the start of World War I in 1914 when the Japanese moved against the German administration  in the islands and forced them out. But German control only lasted until WWI, when Japan took over. The Japanese were more interested in sugar cane than copra, and they cleared groves of coconut palms and tropical forests to create more farmland, often removing ancient latte stones. By the mid-1930s, sugar cane operations in the Mariana's were providing the Japanese with 60% of all revenues generated in Micronesia.

When the Japanese first arrived, there were about 4000 Chamorros in the Mariana's; on the eve of WWII, there were over 45,000 Japanese and immigrant workers there, dwarfing the indigenous population and overwhelming the native culture. But the worst was yet to come: the Mariana's were among the bloodiest battlegrounds of WWII. Closer to Japan than the rest of Micronesia, the Mariana's were key to Japan's defensive perimeter and to the United States' Pacific strategy. In summer 1944, the USA landed in Saipan with a huge invasion force and simultaneously attacked a nearby Japanese fleet. Suffering minor losses, the Americans wiped out most of the fleet, but fierce land battles resulted in hundreds of casualties. The Japanese - both military personnel and civilians - were decimated, with nearly 40,000 lives lost.

Defeated  Germany was stripped of all overseas possessions at the end of the war in 1919. The Mariana Islands  were turned over to the newly created League of Nations to be administered as the Japanese Mandated Territory. Japan had become an ally of the United States, Great Britain  and  France shortly  before the end of the war and was named as this Pacific area's administering  authority. By 1919 the islands were being administered by Japan as a mandate under the League of Nations.

Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, in 1935 after it had virtually annexed the Islands into the Empire. By 1936 a thriving fishing industry had developed as well as a sugar industry. The islands were assaulted by American forces on June 15, 1944  and  one  of the most hotly contested battles  of  the  entire  war,  was  fought on its sandy beaches and mountainous  terrain. American forces gained control of the island in July 1944 and the construction of bases and  airfields began. It was from one such airfield on Tinian, that  the first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima by the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay  hastening the end of hostilities. The airfields on Tinian which, in 1945 were the busiest in the world, are now largely  abandoned.

In July 1947, the area was recognized as a Trust Territory by the United Nations. The United States, Navy , and later the  Department of Interior, became the administrator under a Trusteeship Agreement with the United Nations Organization, the  successor to the League of Nations. In 1952, upon signing the Treaty of Peace in San Francisco,  Japan legally gave up all  claims in the mandated islands  formerly  provided by the League of Nations, and acknowledged the United Nations Agreement establishing the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, with the United States as the administering authority.

In January 1978, the Northern Mariana's became self-governing in political union with the United States, under the terms of a Covenant negotiated between the two governments and the area's first elected governor took office. For the first time after more  than  300  years  under the flags of Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United Nations, the new Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands began to control its a measure of its own destiny. 

On May 28,1986, the United Nations Trusteeship Council concluded that the United States had  satisfactorily discharged its obligations to the islands. On November 4, 1986 United States citizenship was conferred upon those people of the Northern Mariana's, that met the necessary qualifications. On December 22,1990 the Security Council of the United Nations voted to dissolve the Trusteeship. 

Although the Mariana's aren't directly in the typhoon belt, recent storms have caused serious damage. The worst was super-typhoon Keith, which blew through in November 1997, causing widespread havoc but no death or injuries. The other disaster affecting the islands was the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, which caused a drastic drop-off in tourism and sent real estate prices plummeting.

The Mariana's recently made global headlines due to the unsavoury labour practices associated with Saipan's billion-dollar garment industry. Workers from around Asia, are drawn to Saipan with the promise of high wages and American citizenship. What they quickly discover is clothing produced in sweatshops under intolerable conditions, as the Mariana's have special exemption from normal US wage and immigration laws. In 1999, workers filed suits against several American clothing designers and retailers.