I'm making this comment without having read the spoiler text. However, SPOILER ALERT! I will comment on what I found in the game.
I wasn't able to infer much about the society that built the village, but the artifacts that I was able to recover suggested a strong affiliation, with and strong, probably religious regard for, agriculture and plants. To construct such a large statue, the people here must have been moderately wealthy and sophisticated. It's interesting to note that the inscription on the base of the statue identifies the ruler as the *last* of his name. However, it's another clue that fits with the conjecture that other elements suggest. Despite the agricultural theme, the village is currently located in an empty desert of howling wind and blowing sand. Abandoned buckets lie half-buried in the soggy ground of what once may have been bountiful ponds or springs.
The evidence isn't conclusive, but it appears that this village lost its ability to grow crops through a change in the environment, with water drying up and plants dying off. This would likely have been a slow-motion apocalypse, such that a ruler could know that they would be the last of their name, yet still have enough wealth and power to commission a magnificent statue. I can only hope that the refugees were able to find somewhere else to settle.
The villagers, from what little I can tell, seemed to have been a peaceful and prosperous people. Their homes seem to have been well-equipped with furniture and both ceramic and metal vessels. Religion was likely a daily part of their lives, as several houses had altars with offerings of perfume. One altar had bones on it, but there's no way of knowing whether this was an offering/sacrifice or simply the final resting place of a wandering desert creature.
Chairs typically had seven legs, which almost certainly means that the number seven had cultural, probably religious, significance for the villagers. There are pragmatic reasons to build a chair with three legs or four, but not seven. I also found that some chairs in different houses had tooth marks on the legs, suggesting that the people here kept pets in the home, much as we do.
The fact that the ruler was depicted with a trident is especially interesting, since that's a fishing spear. Were these people descended from fishers? Have I grossly underestimated how much water used to be here? I'll never know.