insert away in the northern part of the West African nation of Ghana are the remains of a secret culture . With no scripted or oral records of the people who once lived here , all that has been forget behind are the intricate and beguiling terracotta figurine found forget in cumulus break up across the region . But these Lucius Clay objects may have given up some of theKoma Land peoples’long lost secrets .

The sculptures are odd objects , map both beast and human forms , some with two heads . Many of them have cavities carve into the anterior naris , ears , or lip , the function of which is still being decode . But one suggestion is that they were used to hold liquids , potentially for the purpose of ritual or libation . To test this , researchers decidedto see if they could foregather any DNA evidence from inside these maw , and so deduce what may once have been held within .

The upshot , published in theJournal of Archaeological Science , are both impressive and unexpected . desoxyribonucleic acid is notoriously difficult to find in object recover from hot , arid environments , such as the pitcher’s mound on the southern edge of the Sahara in which the statuette were first identify . After as short a period as 200 years , it is usually remember that the DNA has degraded to such as degree that it is almost insufferable to try out . But surprisingly the team manage to recover some scraps still within the stiff .

It showed that the mannikin had once hold a variety of plant - base substances . These included evidence of plantain and banana , now ubiquitous to most of West Africa , but when these objects were made roughly between 600 and 1300 CE , the fruit were not being cultivated by the Koma Land people . Not only that , but they also found traces of pine tree , which are not hump to grow anywhere in Africa except northwards of the Sahara .

This suggests that while small remains of the enigmatic Koma Land culture today , back when it was expand it had some impressive trade links that traversed not only West Africa , but even right across the largest and live desert in the world . It also affirm the use of the clay figurines in ritual activities , which itself shows that the Koma Land people must have once had a rich polish , now lose to the sands of prison term .