COSTA MESA, CA — A team of anthropologists hard at work completing a field study announced that they had discovered a previously uncontacted native tribe in a remote area of IKEA.

The small village looked to have been tucked away in an unexplored part of the store and appeared untouched since the beginning of human civilization.

"Just fascinating," Kevin Haden, a UCLA student working toward a PhD in anthropology, was heard saying as he observed the tribe from the IKEA restaurant. "Look at their mating rituals, how the man appears to stand in waiting as the woman wanders through the nearby deck furniture."

Dubbed the Cambric People, after the lightweight plain-weave fabric they wear, which the experts speculate the tribe scavenges from one of the store's indigenous sectional sofas, they appear to live in an isolated corner of the store where they've lived for years without human contact of any kind.

According to sources, rumors persisted for years that there was a "lost tribe" of IKEA. Supposed sightings go back to 1993, a year after the Costa Mesa location opened its doors, but all claims were dismissed as the idle gossip of minimum wage employees. Now that their existence had been confirmed, researchers were hard at work piecing together the tribe's history. No one was quite sure of the tribe's origin, though many believe it started as a small family that got lost and eventually adapted to live off foraged Swedish meatballs.

"We've learned so much already. They appear to live under a shamanic influence of some kind and communicate with a system of '80s slang foreign to our time," noted esteemed anthropologist and expedition leader Dr. Rex Pounds. "We're still trying to decipher their language. It may take years."

At publishing time, a member of the research team had been reported captured and was presumed dead, potentially sacrificed to the tribe's god, a sleeper sofa on clearance for 50% off.

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