The first significant signs of human occupation on the territory of Ménerbes date back to the Upper Paleolithic. They were unearthed in the 1950s in the Soubeyras shelter on the left bank of the Calavon river, near the village of Beaumettes. The megalithic dolmen of Pichouno (the little girl) discovered in 1850 by a local farmer seems to correspond to the final Neolithic (Chalco-lithic) period. Ménerbes has also revealed many vestiges of a Gallo-Roman and Roman occupation.