Humans have inhabited the area at least since the Upper Paleolithic, as attested by the famous cave paintings at Chauvet Pont d'Arc.

The Ardèche river plateau has extensive standing stones (mainly dolmens and some menhirs), erected thousands of years ago.

[4] The river has one of Europe's largest canyons, and the caves that dot the cliffs—which go as high as 300 metres (1,000 feet)—are known for signs of prehistoric inhabitants (arrowheads and flint knives are often found).

The Vivarais area suffered greatly in the 9th century with raids by Hungarians and Saracen slavers operating from the coast of Provence resulting in an overall depopulation of the region.

In the early 10th century, economic recovery saw the building of many Romanesque churches in the region, including Ailhon, Mercuer, Saint Julien du Serre, Balazuc, Niègles, and Rochecolombe.

The realm was largely ignored by the Emperors and was finally granted to France as part of the domain of the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of Valois in 1308.

The region had prospered with the introduction of tobacco growing from America, and the agrarian experiments of Olivier de Serres, father of modern French agriculture.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which outlawed Protestantism, led the peasant family of Marie and Pierre Durand to revolt against royal authority.

Despite this, the sons of a local Annonay paper-maker, Joseph and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier, ascended in the first hot air balloon over the town on 4 June 1783.

The firm of Canson Mongolfier continues making paper to this day and every year on the first weekend in June a large hot air balloon gathering celebrates the first journey.

At the 200th anniversary in 1983, some 50 hot air balloons took part with the first historic flight reenacted with people dressed in period costume.

The scientific pioneer Marc Seguin, whose inventions played a key role in the development of early locomotives, was born in the department.

No large towns appeared in the department during the years of France's industrialisation, and its official population total of 388,500, reached in 1861, turned out to be a peak that has not since been matched.

Since the 1860s, the Ardèche economy has been split between the prosperous Rhône valley and the relatively poor and mountainous Haut Vivarais on the department's western side.

Sheep farming did not lead to the prosperity hoped for and wine growing, badly hit by the phylloxera crisis during the last decades of the 19th century, has had to compete with other more established areas of France.

It is a land of great contrasts: at the lowest it is at a mere 40 metres of elevation above sea level at the point at which the Ardèche river flows into the Rhône (in the southeast of the department) up to 1,754 metres at Mont Mézenc (centre-west), it is bordered to the east by the length of the Rhône valley for 140 km and to the west by the high plateaus of the Massif Central.

Hydrographic resources are dominated by these torrential streams and rainfall is characterised by frequent summer showers, with the climate much less extreme than that of the mountains to the west.

The winds from the northeast are dominant, but those of the south (known as the "vent du midi") and west are full of humidity, bringing heavy precipitation for a few days at a time.

The few rivers, the Lavezon, Escoutay, and Frayol, provide less of a hydrological resource than one sees in the crysaline granitic areas to the north.

The climate here is also fairly extreme: snow, without being thick, is frequent, variations of temperature accentuated by the strong, cold winds.

The Rhône valley and the Annonay region, close to the main axes of communication (highways and the TGV railway), are the department's most urbanised areas.

Annonay, Tournon-sur-Rhône, and Guilherand-Granges benefit from the proximity of the nearby town of Valence and the economically more advanced department of la Drôme.

In the southern interior with the town of Aubenas and the valley of the Ardèche river, the population of the cantons of Villeneuve-de-Berg and of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc grows at four times the speed of the departmental average.

The Ardèche department is known for the speciality of Sweet Chestnuts, with the famous "châtaigne d'Ardèche" granted the appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) in 2006.