I recently got a book "Wonders of the World - 100 great man-made treasures of civilization" a Barnes and Noble Book by Rosemary Burton and Richard
Cavendish. It had a couple pages on Easter Island that I found interesting:
When the first Europeans approached it on Easter Sunday in 1722, they saw that the island was ringed with massive statues gazing bizarrely out
to sea. The inhabitants, however, appeared welcoming, and they lit fires encouraging the visitors to come ashore. When they did so, Captain
Roggeveen and his Dutch crew observed three different races amoung the islanders, some dark, some with a reddish skin, and some strikingly
pale-skinned with red hair. Some of these people had curiously extended earlobes, into which large discs were fitted, and these were the ones who
seeemed to show particular reverence for the giant statues.
Skipping ahead it says that in 1770 Spanish expeditions from Peru made the same observations, but "Captain Cook, reaching the island only four years
later, encountered a very different scene. The land had become neglected and barren, the people were listless and demoralized, and, where there had
been no sign of weapons or any warlike tendencies, they now carried wooden clubs and spears. The huge statues had been overturned, and no one seemed
to workship them any more."
Tablets known as "Rongo-Rongo tablets" have been found with their language, but haven't been deciphered.