The arrival of the earliest human communities to the Balearic Islands came later than on other Mediterranean islands, in the 3rd millennium BC during the Early Bronze Age. The first settlers to colonise Menorca had similar characteristics to those who arrived to the island of Mallorca and Ibiza and Formentera Islands, as well as to the cultures of the Eastern Pyrenees and Languedoc, which may have been their origins. Nevertheless, insularity would foster a process of cultural differentiation throughout the 2nd millennium BC, distancing the Menorcan and Mallorcan cultures from those of Ibiza and Formentera.

While the human communities of the two larger islands shared a significant number of principal characteristics until the end of the 2nd millennium and beginning of the 1st millennium BC, in the Late Bronze Age Menorca began to develop traits of its own, clearly distinguishable from the neighbouring island, becoming more accentuated toward the second half of the 1st millennium, during the later stages of the Iron Age, when it became a unique culture with its very own personality.

The first stable human population in Menorca belonged to the cultural trends typical of Western Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. Their most visible trait can be found in their use of megaliths, with constructions made from sizeable vertically placed stones. The most ancient material evidence of the island’s occupation can be found in a type of construction of a funerary nature found all around the island’s territory. These include dolmens, or megalithic sepulchres, elongated hypogea excavated from the rocky subsoil, and paradolmens, or small natural caves with an added megalithic corridor. All of these structures were used as the collective tombs of small communities that did not differentiate status levels among their members and that displayed a rather modest movable material culture.

Little is known regarding how and where the earliest settlers who erected and utilised these funerary structures actually lived. It may have been a community whose economy was based on shifting cultivation or the pasture of livestock, who lived in improvised dwellings like natural caves or caverns, or huts made from ephemeral materials that have consequently not been preserved.

Throughout the 2nd millennium BC, the territorial occupation model grew stronger, and the first stable settlements began to appear. These were small groups of huts, known as dwelling navetas or naviformes, that were erected with no type of prior planning and which, in all likelihood, were used by a single family unit. The structures had an elongated horseshoe shape, with double-sided walls made from medium-sized stones and pebbles. The entrance was southward facing and the roof made of plant matter and mud, which weatherproofed the interior.
This type of settlement, with a varying number of navetas in each case, were typically found on flat terrain with no defensive structures, on hard-to-reach fortified promontories or coastal headlands, and on platforms atop the ravines of the island’s southern region that provided vital visual control of the surroundings and were more easily defended. The two latter types of dwelling naveta settlements may speak of a certain level of instability of this period, although it is not clear whether the possible dangers originated off the island or from other island communities. 
 
These settlers laid their dead to rest in what are known as ‘burial navetas’, with their elongated shape, they were the result of the evolution over time of funerary structures from earlier periods (megalithic sepulchres and those intermediate structures between the sepulchres and the elongated navetas; that is, the so-called intermediate navetas or triple-walled sepulchres and the circular navetas), as well as in natural caves with cyclopean enclosing walls. All of the aforementioned were used as collective tombs.
 
The communities that inhabited the dwelling naveta settlements were based on an egalitarian and homogenous social structure, with relations among their members established through kinship, without the existence of centres of power. Their primary means of subsistence could be found in livestock (goats, sheep, pigs and cows), which they combined with the farming of cereal crops. They may also have carried out certain commercial activities, as signs of metallurgy have been discovered in a number of navetas. Fishing and gathering, on the other hand, were quite rare.

Near the end of the 2nd millennium BC, during the Late Bronze Age and the start of the Iron Age, the human communities that inhabited Menorca began to undergo significant changes. It is not clear whether these were simply the result of the internal evolution of the island’s population, or due to the arrival or new contingents of population. In either case, these changes are reflected in the gradual abandonment of the small dwelling naveta settlements and the rise of larger settlements, with roads, open areas and multipurpose spaces, that surrounded tower-shaped monumental structures of a public nature; the talayots. This change to their settlement model is due to an ever-greater increase in population levels and the resulting importance of territorial control so as to better satisfy the needs of the growing population.
The number and size of the talayots that any one settlement could house, as well as the size of the settlements themselves, may indicate a certain hierarchy among them, with the existence of principal population centres that supplied and had control over extensive territories and a group of smaller subordinate settlements that depended on these principal settlements. In any case, Talayotic settlements were always found on high ground at a distance from the coast, in locations that provided visual control of their surroundings. More are found in the island’s southern region, which was better for cultivation and the exploitation of water resources.
 
The economy of the Talayotic society, like the one before it, was an economic model based on agriculture and livestock farming. Cereal crops continued to play an important role, with livestock focused primarily on rearing sheep and goats, while less so cows and pigs. There was also an increased presence of secondary products derived from these domestic animals, as well as the introduction of new species like chickens and rabbits, while fishing and gathering remain virtually absent.

The talayot is the period’s most representative structure. It can be described as a large truncated cone-shaped tower built using cyclopean techniques with stones taken from the surrounding area that were then smoothed and stacked without mortar. Unlike Mallorcan talayots, in Menorca they come in multiple types and shapes. Menorcan talayots are larger than those of the neighbouring island, and very few have an internal chamber accessible from the ground floor, still others show narrow corridors with ramps, while the most monumental are typically solid with a usable space on the upper level.
 
The emergence of talayots, at the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, shows a break from the previous period with regard to construction type, although not with regard to technique, which remained quite similar. The precise function of the talayot, however, remains unclear. The most common theories argue that they may have been community hubs for the distribution of food products within a social context of an egalitarian nature, elements that showed the prestige and power of the dominant classes of a highly stratified society, or of one in the process of hierarchisation, military buildings used for territorial control, or perhaps of a more symbolic nature, as elements for social cohesion, as their very construction required the efforts of the entire community and organised labour. Regardless, the variety of Menorcan talayots may indicate a corresponding variety of functions, or perhaps that they were erected in different contexts and times.
 
Apart from the talayots, there are other known associated buildings constructed using cyclopean techniques. The few sites that have been excavated to date (Cornia Nou being the most significant) show signs that they were not used for domestic purposes, but instead as areas used for processing products derived from the community’s agricultural activities. Additionally, little or no information is available regarding how and where the groups of individuals who built the talayots actually lived, as one of the great remaining mysteries of Menorcan prehistory.

The world of the dead in the Talayotic period was still characterised by its collective burials. Unlike the talayots, which were found on elevated ground, sites used for funerary purposes were located in ravines, depressions, cliffs and coves found far from the world of the living. Many have been discovered all around the island’s territory.  
 
Burial navetas were initially still in use, but were gradually abandoned throughout this period. The most famous of these constructions is the Naveta des Tudons, a collective tomb built using cyclopean techniques, with double-sided walls and no mortal whatsoever. When an individual was buried, the bones of those previously buried were pushed toward the back walls of the naveta, eventually leading to a chaotic store of bones and funerary objects.
 
At the same time as the burial navetas, throughout the Talayotic culture and until the end of this period, natural caves with cyclopean enclosures at the entrance remained in use, found typically in cliff sides, ravines and other areas set away from the settlements. These were collective tombs where rituals that have only been documented in Menorca took place: from the introduction of corpses in foetal position, bound and wrapped in animal skins, to specific rituals performed using the hair of the deceased, which were first dyed red, then a few locks were cut off and placed inside cylindrical leather or wooden containers. No matter which type of site, these caves became genuine bone dumps, where skulls were handled differently and showing no signs of preferential or differentiated treatment among the different individuals.
 
Other types of funerary constructions from the Talayotic period include hypogea with a simple circular or oval layout and, later, hypogea with a rectangular entrance and a more complex layout with the presence of columns in many cases. This model first appeared at the end of the period and grew widespread in the next. This type of burial involved a notable wealth of grave goods, with the presence of weapons and luxurious ornamental objects.

Toward the middle of the 1st millennium BC, a series of changes in Menorca’s autochthonous culture arose, resulting from the growing hierarchisation of the Talayotic culture and the influence that the colonial powers, who were fighting at the time for control of the Western Mediterranean, would gradually exert over the indigenous culture.

Talayots ceased to be constructed during this period, although they survived within the settlements perhaps as symbolic elements of their past or as territorial landmarks. Meanwhile, a previously inexistent type of structure made its first appearance; the taula enclosure, a type of sanctuary where the community would perform ceremonies of a ritualistic and festive nature. This period is also characterised by the introduction of iron metallurgy, and still more so by the construction of walls around a number of settlements, coinciding with the large-scale arrival of imported materials, especially amphorae used for wine and domestic crockery originating from the Punic colony of Ibiza.

There are no clear signs in Menorca of Punic colonisation in the strict sense of the word, although the intensification of a market for commercial trade has been demonstrated. The archaeological materials discovered through excavations and evidence of the survival of construction techniques from previous periods indicate that earlier ideological structures were conserved during this period.

The circles found in the settlements correspond to the last centuries of Menorcan prehistoric culture. Little is known at present about these structures, which were subjected to alterations and changes in usage and distribution of their interiors until as late as Roman and Andalusian times.

Broadly speaking, circles are dwellings that are interconnected without prior planning. They are circular in shape (hence their name) and have double-sided walls with a single entrance, a central open-air courtyard and various surrounding domestic spaces that included perishable roof materials. Seen in association with circles are, first, hypostyle halls, with stone slab roofs supported by columns of the same material, used for storage, and second, a large courtyard at the entrance used to house livestock. Discovered in circles are those elements necessary for the execution of the everyday activities of a family unit, including rest, food production, ceramic and fabric production or the processing of leather or wool. 

The families that inhabited the circles laboured in the rearing of goats for milk production, of sheep to obtain meat, milk and wool, and cows and oxen, for their milk and as beasts of burden. They also possessed pigs and horses. To a similar extent, they carried out agricultural activities, and to a far lesser degree, as was the case in previous periods, fishing and gathering were merely residual or secondary practices.

The second typical construction of this period is the taula enclosure, whose central element is the taula itself; a vertical pillar situated at the heart of the enclosure upon which another large stone was placed horizontally, forming what appears to be an enormous T. The multiple archaeological excavations carried out on this type of structure share the discovery of an area of ashes and an accumulation of remains from lambs and kids beside the taula and concentration of broken amphorae scattered in the immediate area, in addition to fragments of Talayotic and Punic ceramic vessels associated with the consumption of these very animals. It is believed that taula enclosures were the site of communal ceremonies and rituals that most certainly involved the consumption of wine and meat.

Burial navetas were already part of the past and it is at this moment when, despite the continued use of natural caves as burial sites, the large necropolises of artificial caves or hypogea began to take shape both near the coast and inland. In this final period of Menorcan prehistory, large compartmentalised caves with functional details that differed from those of the previous period became widespread. 

The hypogea were collective tombs where a variety of funerary rites were performed. Some rituals involved corpses being placed upon stretchers or in wooden coffins along with their grave goods, while others involved lime burials. In both cases, the presence of bronze in the grave goods diminished in favour of those of iron. Distinctions were not made for the corpses of different individuals. In fact, they were buried together, without separation based on gender or age, although it has been observed that certain individuals possessed more extravagant grave goods than the rest.

Quicklime burials were a novelty in this period. The lime was poured over the body and its grave goods to accelerate decomposition of soft tissue and sanitise the tomb. In some cases, it appears that cremation was done through the prior placement of calcareous stone or lime dust over the body. This allowed fire to consume the soft tissue while the stone turned into quicklime (calcium oxide), and when solidified, the remains were placed inside the funerary site. The reason for preferring one ritual or the other is unknown, although it appears that the different traditions established by each family clan could make for a plausible explanation.

Classical sources speak of the existence of Balearic slingers hired as mercenaries at the service of the Carthaginian army, denoting their remarkable ability and efficiency in battle. In the 5th century BC, they were recruited to fight in the Greco-Punic Wars, and in the 3rd century BC, they fought for the same side in confrontations against Roman armies during the Punic Wars, when said army began to gain ground on Carthage and proclaim dominance in the Mediterranean.
Classical authors explain that the Balearic slingers received coins for their services, which they in turn spent on wine and women. In this sense, there is well-documented evidence of the presence of wine in religious festivities and ceremonies that were celebrated within the taula enclosures, while women held an important role both with regard to the tasks they carried out in a domestic sense as well as in reproduction. Trade relations maintained by Menorcans with the peoples of the Mediterranean were based primarily on the trade and transaction of products like wine, oil and luxury items, in exchange perhaps for products derived from local livestock activities.
 
Carthaginian defeat in the Second Punic War marked the beginning of the progressive expansion of Roman power around the Mediterranean. The conquest and inclusion of the Balearic Islands into the territories of the Roman Republic in 123 BC triggered the gradual assimilation by indigenous settlers, who slowly adopted the Roman way of life. At first, the population remained in the settlements and continued to use the ancient necropolises, where the traditions and beliefs of the autochthonous culture would survive for a time. But the Roman language and customs would eventually prevail among the indigenous culture, growing ever more similar to other cultures of the areas of Roman influence