When Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen landed on Easter Island in 1722, he found the inhabitants subsisting on sea snails and rats. When they needed to fish, they paddled leaky, patched canoes mere yards offshore. The island itself was a desolate wilderness of scorched grasses and scrub brush.

Then Roggeveen discovered something that truly astonished him: Hundreds of massive stone monoliths littered the island. The statues (or moai) weighed up to 82 tons and featured striking artistic complexity. Who had created these works of art? Surely not the current half-starved islanders. And if it was an earlier people, how had they transported such leviathans? With what machines or timber?

The mysteries unfolded over time—and many still perplex us today—as distant explorers, tourists, and archaeologists visited Easter Island. According to scientist Jared Diamond, what emerged was a story of rapid and violent decline, from an industrious troupe of settlers to a destructive force of ecocide. Easter’s inhabitants had ruined their bountiful habitat. Over several generations, they felled every tree and wiped out dozens of native fauna species.

Between 900 and 1200 A.D.(though these dates are contested), a small group of Polynesians — maybe even a single family — traveled by sea to the 63-square-mile patch of land in the Pacific Ocean. The next nearest island is 1,100 miles away; the nearest continent, South America, is over 2,000. In small canoes that could hold no more than two people at a time, these people navigated using the stars and ocean swells to find Easter Island, which they called Rapa Nui.