Groups from southeastern Asia, primarily speakers of the languages (now) classified as Malayo-Polynesian, have begun to spread out to nearby Pacific Islands.

Saipan, along with neighboring Guam, Rota/Luta, Tinian, and to a lesser extent smaller islands northward, seems to have been first inhabited around 2000 BCE.

Evidence of human habitation in Saipan, the second largest of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, dates from around 1500.