She explained: 'We worked with sculptures from the collections of the State Hermitage Museum (St Petersburg). First, we found out how these figurines were made and checked our conclusions with experiments. Some of the figurines are just work pieces, to the finished works.'

In other words, they are prototypes and 'this allowed us to reconstruct all the steps in their creation.

'Yet the most unexpected result was that we saw traces on the surface of the figurines that were not spotted earlier, as they are not visible to the naked eye, due to the ravages of time. These traces showed more details of clothes than we had seen previously: bracelets, hats, shoes, bags and even back packs.' ...;

..,,,,Unfolding before their eyes were images of people as they were 20,000 years ago.

'This approach allowed us to reveal many interesting new details and review some ideas about these sculptures,' she said. 'Previously, there had been different approaches to the classification of these figurines, but the basic was a division into 'dressed' and 'naked'.

'Our research showed that all of them are more or less 'dressed'. We saw the different types of hats, hairstyles, shoes and accessories, which were depicted with thin lines. The ancient masters used different techniques to highlight the different materials - fur, leather, and decorations. .....