There has been human settlement in the area around present-day Postojna since the Pleistocene epoch. This is shown by finds from caves such as Betalov Spodmol, Županov Spodmol, Zakajeni Spodmol, Jama v Lozi, the Sheep's Cave and Parska Golobina. Traces of habitation from this epoch were also found in Postojna Cave during the renovation of the railway in the 1960s: artefacts, animal remains and the remains of charcoal. Even before that the cave was famous as the place where the bones of Pleistocene animals – bear, lion, hyena, wolf, deer – had been found.

That those sections of the cave closer to the surface also received visitors in later periods is proved by the signatures from the Passage of Old Signatures, the oldest of which date back to the 13th century, although the largest number are from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Among the famous visitors to publish descriptions of the cave was Johann Weichard Valvasor, who described it – with a good deal of baroque exaggeration – in The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola(1689). The first to describe the cave as he had really seen it was the 18th century scientist Balthasar Hacquet, in his work Oryctographia Carniolica(1778–1789).

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