The Páramo As An Ecosystem And A Life
To understand the world that the Punín-2 man inhabited, it is necessary to understand the páramo — the high-altitude grassland that is the dominant ecosystem of the Andean highlands above approximately 3,200 to 3,500 meters in Ecuador.
The páramo is one of the most distinctive ecosystems in the world. Found only in the tropical Andes of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and northern Peru, and in small isolated patches in Central America and East Africa, it is the product of specific conditions: high altitude creating low temperatures and intense solar radiation, proximity to the equator creating relatively stable year-round temperatures rather than the extreme seasonal variation of temperate high-altitude zones, and the specific weather patterns of the tropical Andes creating a reliable supply of moisture from the Pacific and the Amazon basin.
The result is a landscape that is cold and frequently wet, dominated by tussock grasses (Calamagrostis and Stipa species are among the most common), interspersed with bogs and small lakes, and punctuated by the remarkable frailejones — the large rosette plants of the genus Espeletia that are the visual signature of the páramo. The frailejones’ woolly leaves retain moisture and insulate against cold, allowing them to persist through the cold nights and intense UV radiation that characterize the environment.
For a hunter-gatherer community living at these altitudes, the páramo offered specific resources. The most important were the animals it supported. White-tailed deer were present and were hunted throughout the prehistoric Andes. Spectacled bears, the only bear species native to South America, were present in the higher zones. Various rodent species, including viscachas and various caviid rodents related to guinea pigs, would have provided smaller game. And the birds of the páramo — including the Andean condor and various other raptors, waterfowl around the lakes and bogs, and numerous smaller species — represented both food resources and presumably objects of cultural attention.
The plant resources of the páramo itself are limited but not negligible. Various herbaceous plants have edible roots or tubers, and the cushion plants and other low-growing species of the wetter zones provide resources that hunter-gatherer communities with knowledge of the local flora would have known and used. Below the páramo, in the montane forests and inter-Andean valleys, more abundant plant food resources would have been accessible at specific seasons.
The water resources of the páramo were and remain significant. The high-altitude lakes and bogs of the páramo are important sources of water for the inter-Andean valleys below — the sponge-like structure of the páramo vegetation retains water and releases it slowly, feeding the rivers and streams that irrigate the lower valleys. For hunter-gatherer communities living in or near the páramo, water availability would have been reliable in a way that more arid environments do not provide.
The Punín-2 man lived in and around this environment. His knowledge of it — of where to find game in different seasons, of which plants were edible and which medicinal, of the weather patterns that the mountain and the altitude created, of the specific character of the dozens of micro-environments that the páramo and its transition zones to forest and valley below contain — was the practical foundation of his life and the accumulated wisdom of his community.