Tens of thousands of years ago, the world as we know it today would have been unrecognizable.
Humans were still living as hunter-gatherer societies in small bands, and massive animals like mammoths, lions, rhinos, and aurochs, a terrifyingly large ancestor of the modern cow, roamed Europe.
It was near the end of the last Ice Age, and the very earliest glimmers of what would later become human cultures.
But even with all those glaring differences, humans were still human, and with being human comes the drive to create.
And create they did. Slipping into dark caves, they created murals on the stone walls using charcoal and ochre, a reddish or yellowish mineral pigment.
Today, one of the many caves with Paleolithic, or Stone Age, murals in them is the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in southern France, known commonly as just Chauvet.
It was discovered in 1994, and today it's considered one of the most significant examples of prehistoric art.
And just like the fantastic etchings at Nine Mile Canyon in the U.S., it's a thrilling peek into a very distant past. But when you see it, it suddenly doesn't seem quite so distant.
Take a look for yourself and see what our artsy ancestors were doing so many years ago…
In southern France, in the scenic gorges among the Ardèche River, there was an unassuming limestone cliff that had lain undisturbed for tens of thousands of years.
But in December of 1994, people explored it for the first time in what they would discover would be about 28,000 years.
And this is what they discovered: incredible murals of animals painted by Cro-Magnon-era humans during the last Ice Age.
The murals, painted in charcoal and ochre, depict lions, like the one above, as well as rhinos, mammoths, deer, bison, and massive prehistoric cows known as aurochs.
All of these animals roamed Europe during the Ice Age, and humans would have seen them regularly.
And besides the paintings, explorers also found charring left over from ancient torches and hearths.
They even found fossilized footprints, made when the cave floor was soft and left to harden over time.
One of these prints was that of a child. It seems that after the child visited and left the cave, a landslide covered the opening, preserving the cave for 28,000 years.
In all, archaeologists identifed 13 distinct species of animals, including some that only appear in these caves.
Prehistoric artists rarely painted humans and focused instead on animals and some abstract designs, as well as handprints.
Most archaeologists believe that the paintings are religious in nature, and that there was likely a ritual involved with creating them.
The animals may have been considered gods, or perhaps the paintings were a form of asking for a plentiful hunt or protection from predators.
And though they're painted with primitive materials, and would have been drawn in the near-darkness of torchlight, the figures are remarkably realistic.
Wild horses like this are also popular in cave art, and would have roamed the area during prehistoric times.
But it would take about another 20,000 years until they were domesticated.
The images were painted at different times by different people, but whoever did them had an innate artistic skill.
Even so many thousands of years ago, people loved to create. It's pretty remarkable!
And it makes you realize how amazingly things really do change. Imagine a time when rhinos like these were native to France!
Thanks to the landslide and the caves naturally cool, dark climate, the paintings were perfectly preserved. But they are fragile.
In fact, they're so fragile that the cave has actually been re-sealed and closed off to the public after all the paintings, which number in the hundreds, were carefully catalogued.
But if you want to see the paintings, don't worry.
A complete replica of the caves and their paintings was created in 2015, so visitors can get the experience of entering the chilly caves and seeing the paintings by flickering firelight, all without damaging the originals.
The originals can only be accessed by researchers.
If you can't get to France, check out the 2010 documentary on Chauvet for some amazing footage of the original paintings.
And if you know anyone who loves history — and we mean super way-back history — be sure to SHARE this amazing ancient art with them!
