No one had seen them for tens of thousands of years as the entrance to the cave had collapsed.
But ever since the discovery, a team of French archaeologists have been carrying out a careful scientific examination of the Chauvet cave and everything in it - prehistoric paintings, animal bones and human footprints. It will take them most of their lifetimes.
Our arts correspondent Nicholas Glass was given rare access to that team and their extraordinary research project.
The torch lit image is a reconstruction of how pre-historic man would've seen his creations - by torch and firelight. The cave paintings are in charcoal and ochre. Some etched with flint tools.
And although the drawing is completely naturalistic - modern even - all of them are unimaginably old: 32,000 years old - the oldest art on earth.
When the sun came up - all those millennia ago - the climate would've been Siberian. We visit in winter sunshine.
Pre-historic man would've known the place from an extraordinary landmark - a natural limestone arch over the River Ardeche.
It's a gentle climb - in a spectacular setting. The Gorge here is peppered with caves. As we ascend, on limestone scree, through the pine trees, we are walking where cavemen walked.
The Chauvet cave takes its name from the French pot-holer who discovered it in 1994. For the last five years, French archaeologists have been excavating what they call ' the birthplace of art '. The original potholers went in through a small cavity in the rock face.
These days, there's a timber walkway for the archaeologists. And the cave - and its galleries of paintings - are protected by a steel door, with an access code.
Chauvet is an enormous cave - more accurately a cave system. It's 100 feet or so below the surface of the limestone plateau. From beginning to end - it runs for almost a third of a mile - buried within the rock, like some ethereal fire-breathing dragon.
There are seven chambers, some as much 150 feet across, 50 feet high. In all, Chauvet is ten times the size of that other great French decorated cave, Lascaux in the Dordogne. What startled the pot-holers, and now the archaeologists is the freshness of everything.
What makes it special is the state of preservation. And this is really unique because you can still see the finger marks where they spread the pigments, where they dried their hands on the wall. And that's unique! You really have the feeling that they've just left the cave.
They've been investigating one of the more elaborate panels to see how it was done. The first to leave a mark was a cave bear. The prehistoric artist began by engraving with a stick - above the bear scratches. Then he cleared himself a space, for something more ambitious.
He started with a series of rhinos. A pair of them face off - horn to horn. He added a series of aurochs or wild oxen. And to round his composition off, a quartet of horses. He gets better at horses, the more he does.
He designed his panel. It's genuinely designed. Like Leonardo Da Vinci in front on his canvas, the artist conceived his figures before putting them on the wall of the cave.
A team of five graphic artists have been photographing and sketching the paintings. It's designed to show how the prehistoric artist worked. How he used his charcoal to blur the outline of the animal. Etched with a flint to emphasis the eye and the mouth. And he did much the same with a stag drawing.
Gilles Tosello, Graphic Artist, Prehistoric Art:
"This essentially allows to assess how good they were, their virtuosity. For example on the stag, there are no changes at all, no re-drawing, no perceptible mistakes. This man was certainly a great draughtsman."
The cave floor is littered with thousands of bear bones - so many and so distributed that archaeologists are wondering if there was some form of bear cult or worship. Bones are used to mark out spaces, for holding torches. And one skull has been deliberately placed on a stone.
The Chauvet cave has also yielded up one other tantalising story. Among the thousands of animal tracks, they've found the footprints - they think - of young boy. Alongside them are dog tracks. If confirmed, you are looking at the track of the first domestic animal in history.
Michel-Alain Garcia, Tracks Expert:
"I have to be cautious here. We don't have all the information yet to confirm if the boy and the dog were there at the same time. But what's amazing is to see that the animal and human tracks follow the same path. They go to the same place."
Research into the paintings has already confounded expectations. Were they used as part of some ritual? Archaeologists hesitate to use the word, religion. Pre-historic man was a much more sophisticated artist than anyone realised. And his mythology much more complex.
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