Bogotá savanna

The average temperature of the plateau is 14 °C (57 °F), but this can fluctuate between 0 and 24 °C (32 and 75 °F). The dry and rainy seasons alternate frequently during the year. The driest months are December, January, February and March. During the rainy months, the temperature tends to be more stable with variations between 9 and 20 °C (48 and 68 °F). June, July and August are the months that present the largest variations of temperature, and during the morning frost in the higher terrains surrounding the savanna is possible. Sometimes also ground frost is present, which has a negative impact on agriculture. Hail is a relatively common phenomenon on the savanna.[3][4]

• Bogotá River - 375 kilometres (14,800,000 in)
  • Bojacá River
  • Fucha River
  • Teusacá River
  • Juan Amarillo River
  • Tunjuelo River
  • Soacha River
  • Neusa River
  • Río Frío
  • Subachoque River

• Lake Guatavita - overlooking the northeastern part of the savanna
• Lake Herrera

• Tominé Reservoir - northeast, biggest waterbody on the Bogotá savanna - 690 cubic megametres (2.4×10²² cu ft)
• Neusa Reservoir - north - 102 cubic megametres (3.6×10²¹ cu ft)
• El Muña Reservoir - south - 42 cubic megametres (1.5×10²¹ cu ft)
• Lake Herrera (since 1973)[5]

• Tequendama Falls - southwestern limit

There is a system of wetlands (humedales) that regulate the soil moisture acting like sponges for the rain waters. Fifteen wetlands have a protected status, with various wetlands as unprotected. In 1950, the total surface area of the wetlands amounted to 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres), but due to the urbanisation of the Colombian capital the total area has been reduced to 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres).[6]

Map
Wetlands within Bogotá Torca River basin Juan Amarillo River basin Fucha River basin Tunjuelo River basin

Wetland	Location	Altitude (m)	Area (ha)	Notes	Image
Guaymaral y Torca	Usaquén Suba	2547	73	[7][8]
La Conejera	Suba	2544	58.9	[9]
Córdoba	Suba	2548	40.51	[10]
Tibabuyes Juan Amarillo	Suba Engativá	2539	222.58	[11]
Jaboque	Engativá	2539	148	[12]
Santa María del Lago	Engativá	2549	12	[13]
El Burro	Kennedy	2541	18.84	[14]
La Vaca	Kennedy	2548	7.96	[15]
Techo	Techo, Kennedy	2545	11.46	[16]
Capellanía	Fontibón	2542	27.05	[17]
Meandro del Say	Fontibón Mosquera	2548	13.6	[18]
Tibanica	Bosa Soacha	2542	28.8	[19]
El Salitre	Barrios Unidos	2558	6.4	[20]
La Isla	Bosa	2550	7.7	[21]
La Florida	Funza	2542	26	[22]

At the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, the region was inhabited by the Muisca who lived in hundreds of small villages scattered across the plateau. These villages were individually ruled by caciques who at the same time paid tribute to the zipa, ruler of Bacatá. The Muisca were known as "The Salt People", thanks to their extraction of rock salt from brines in large pots heated over fires. This process was the exclusive task of the Muisca women.

The economy of the Muisca, meaning "person" or "people" in their indigenous version of Chibcha; Muysccubun, was self-sufficient due to the advanced agriculture on the fertile soils of the frequently flooding Bogotá savanna. More tropical and subtropical agricultural products as avocadoes and cotton were traded with their neighbours, in particular the Guane and Lache in the north and northeast and the Guayupe, Achagua and Tegua in the east.

The Muisca were known as skilled goldworkers, represented in the famous Muisca raft, that symbolises the initiation ritual of the new zipa in Lake Guatavita. This ritual, where the zipa covered himself in gold dust and jumped in the 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) altitude lake, gave rise to the -not so much- legend of El Dorado.

Indigenous Muisca fishermen in Funza
Litho by Ramón Torres Méndez

Pottery producing Muisca in Tocancipá
Litho by Ramón Torres Méndez

In April 1536, a group of around 800 conquistadors left the relative safety of the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta to start a strenuous expedition up the Magdalena River, the main fluvial artery of Colombia. Word got around among the Spanish colonisers that deep in the unknown Andes, a rich area with an advanced civilisation must exist. These tales bore the -not so much- legend of El Dorado; the city or man of gold. The Muisca, skilled goldworkers, held a ritual in Lake Guatavita where the new zipa would cover himself in gold dust and jump from a raft into the cold waters of the 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) high lake to the northeast of the Bogotá savanna.

After a journey of almost a year, where the Spanish lost over 80% of their soldiers, the conquistadors following the Suárez River, reached the Bogotá savanna in March 1537. The zipa who ruled the Bogotá savanna at the arrival of the Spanish was Tisquesusa. The Muisca posed little resistance to the Spanish strangers and Tisquesusa was defeated in April 1537 in Funza, in the centre of the savanna. He fled towards the western hills and died of his wounds in Facatativá, on the southwestern edge of the Bogotá savanna. The Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada established the New Kingdom of Granada with capital Santa Fe de Bogotá on August 6, 1538. This started a process of colonisation, evangelisation and submittance of the Muisca to the new rule. Between 65 and 80% of the indigenous people perished due to European diseases as smallpox and typhus. The Spanish introduced new crops, replacing many of the New World crops that the Muisca cultivated.

The Spanish colonizers engaged in the construction of Spanish-style towns to replace all the indigenous villages and in the process of assimilation and religious convert of the Muisca. The majority of those villages kept their indigenous names, but some were slightly modified in time, like Suacha which became Soacha, Hyntiba becoming Fontibón and Bacatá becoming Bogotá.

Over the course of the 16th to early 20th century, the Bogotá savanna was sparsely populated and industrialised. The rise in population during the twentieth century and the expansion of agriculture and urbanisation reduced the biodiversity and natural habitat of the Bogotá savanna severely. Today, the Metropolitan Area of Bogotá on the Bogotá savanna hosts more than ten million people. Bogotá is the biggest city worldwide at altitudes above 2,500 metres (8,200 ft). The many rivers on the savanna are highly contaminated and efforts to solve the environmental problems are conducted in the 21st century.

• Struth, Lucía; Julien Babault, and Antonio Teixell. 2015. Drainage reorganization during mountain building in the river system of the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes. Geomorphology 250. 1–41.
• Dueñas, Hernando. 1980. Palinología de los sedimentos pliocénicos y cuaternarios de la Sabana de Bogotá. Boletín Instituto de Geociencias 31. 168–180.
• Montoya Arenas, Diana María, and Germán Alfonso Reyes Torres. 2005. Geología de la Sabana de Bogotá, 1–104. INGEOMINAS.
• De Porta, J. 1965. La posición estratigráfica de la fauna de Mamíferos del Pleistocene de la Sabana de Bogotá, 37–54. Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
• De Porta, J. 1960. Los equidos fósiles de la Sabana de Bogotá, 51–78. Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
• Huertas, Gustavo. 1960. De la flora fósil de la Sabana. Boletín Geológico, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Bucaramanga 5. 53–57.

• Andrade L., Martha Esperanza, and Henry Benitez Castañeda. s.a. Los Humedales de la Sabana de Bogotá: Área Importante para la Conservación de las Aves de Colombia y el Mundo, 1–38. AICAS.
• Moreno, Vanesa; Juan Francisco García, and Juan Carlos Villalba. s.a. Descripción general de los humedales de Bogotá D.C., 1–28. Sociedad Geográfica de Colombia.
• Sandoval Rincón, Diana Marcela. 2013. Protected Areas in the City, Urban Wetlands of Bogotá. Cuadernos de Vivienda y Urbanismo 6. 80–103.

• Calvachi Zambrano, Byron. 2002. La biodiversidad bogotana. Revista La Tadeo 67. 89–98.
• Pérez Preciado, Alfonso. 2000. La estructura ecológica principal de la Sabana de Bogotá, 1–37. Sociedad Geográfica de Colombia.

• Cardale de Schrimpff, Marianne. 1985. En busca de los primeros agricultores del Altiplano Cundiboyacense - Searching for the first farmers of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, 99–125. Banco de la República.
• Correal Urrego, Gonzalo. 1990. Aguazuque: Evidence of hunter-gatherers and growers on the high plains of the Eastern Ranges, 1–316. Banco de la República: Fundación de Investigaciones Arqueológicas Nacionales.

• Argüello García, Pedro María. 2015. Subsistence economy and chiefdom emergence in the Muisca area. A study of the Valle de Tena (PhD), 1–193. University of Pittsburgh.
• Broadbent, Sylvia M.. 1965. Investigaciones arqueológicas en el Territorio Chibcha - Archaeological investigations in the Chibcha Territory, 1–38.
• Cooper, Jago. 2013. The Lost Kingdoms of South America - Episode 3 - Lands of Gold.
• Daza, Blanca Ysabel. 2013. Historia del proceso de mestizaje alimentario entre Colombia y España - History of the integration process of foods between Colombia and Spain (PhD), 1–494. Universitat de Barcelona.
• Francis, John Michael. 1993. "Muchas hipas, no minas" The Muiscas, a merchant society: Spanish misconceptions and demographic change (M.A.), 1–118. University of Alberta.
• Gamboa Mendoza, Jorge. 2016. Los muiscas, grupos indígenas del Nuevo Reino de Granada. Una nueva propuesta sobre su organizacíon socio-política y su evolucíon en el siglo XVI - The Muisca, indigenous groups of the New Kingdom of Granada. A new proposal on their social-political organization and their evolution in the 16th century. Museo del Oro.
• Kruschek, Michael H.. 2003. The evolution of the Bogotá chiefdom: A household view (PhD), 1–271. University of Pittsburgh.

• Friede, Juan. 1960. Descubrimiento del Nuevo Reino de Granada y Fundación de Bogotá (1536-1539), 1–342. Banco de la República.