The Eastern Hills are bordered by the Chingaza National Natural Park to the east, the Bogotá savanna to the west and north, and the Sumapaz Páramo to the south.

The fold and thrust belt of the Eastern Hills was produced by the Andean orogeny with the main phase of tectonic compression and uplift taking place in the Pliocene.

The Guadalupe and Monserrate Hills, important in Muisca religion and archaeoastronomy, are the hilltops from where Sué, the Sun, rises on the December and June solstices respectively, when viewed from the present-day Bolívar Square.

Despite its status as a protected area, the Eastern Hills lie in an urban setting with more than ten million inhabitants and are affected by mining activities, illicit construction, stream contamination, and frequent forest fires.

From north to south, the rural areas of the localities of Usaquén, Chapinero, Santa Fe, San Cristóbal and Usme are part of the Eastern Hills.

[13] Concordantly overlying the Guadalupe Group is the Maastrichtian to Early Paleocene Guaduas Formation, composed of well-laminated compacted grey shales and calcitic claystones with sandstone banks and in the lower parts of the stratigraphical sequence numerous coal beds.

[23] This Pleistocene sequence is followed by poorly consolidated to unconsolidated sediments of lacustrine origin, Pleistocene–Holocene in age, mixed with the erosional products of the Eastern and Suba Hills and Sumapaz mountains that form the alluvium.

[25] The Asociación Cabrera-Cruz Verde type soils exist at moderate inclinations between 12 and 50%, are derived from argillaceous rocks with volcanic ash influence, have a fast drainage and a pH between 4.5 and 5.0.

[30] The Early Cretaceous stages Berriasian and Valanginian were dominated by the presence of a marine incursion from the proto-Caribbean into the continent of South America, in those times still attached to Africa and Antarctica.

During the Late Aptian to Early Albian, a marine shale-dominated sedimentation existed with more carbonate-rich deposits to the north, represented by the mosasaur fossil-bearing Paja Formation in Boyacá.

The Turonian stage of the Cretaceous era experienced a worldwide anoxic event that produced highly organic shales in the area, today represented by the Chipaque Formation.

During the Early Paleocene, the Peñon-Cobardes and Arcabuco anticlines started to rise, when the southern parts of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense were still submerged and characterised by a fluvio-deltaic depositional environment.

[32] The Late Paleocene marked a time where continued uplift of the two westernmost ranges were exhumed and provided sediments for the narrow basin in the area of the Eastern Hills.

[35] During the Early Oligocene, the region of the Eastern Hills and the Bogotá savanna was exhumed, while sedimentation in the Llanos Orientales continued, depositing the Carbonera Formation in a lacustrine-marine setting.

[44] The Plio–Pleistocene period was marked by the presence of a fluvio-lacustrine depositional environment (Lake Humboldt) on the Bogotá savanna, sourced by rivers running off the Eastern Hills.

[45] The Latest Pleistocene was characterised by a period of cooling with a minor glacier present in the highest part of the central Eastern Hills.Moraines in this area have been dated to 18,000 until 15,500 years BP, in the late Last Glacial Maximum.

[75] Until the first half of the twentieth century, such larger species as the puma, spectacled bear and white-tailed deer populated the Eastern Hills, but these have been hunted to extinction locally.

The location in a valley between the surrounding mountains evidenced a concept of archaeoastronomical knowledge of the people of the region; at the summer solstice of June 21 seen from the Muisca solar observatory, the Sun rises exactly from Lake Iguaque, where in the religion of the pre-Hispanic inhabitants the mother and Earth goddess Bachué was born.

[86][87] The first Europeans who saw and visited the Eastern Hills were the troops led by conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada who entered the Bogotá savanna in March 1537 during what for the Spanish proved to be the deadliest of their conquests of advanced pre-Columbian civilisations.

[91][92][93] These hunter-gatherers lived in rock shelters, collected food, and hunted animals mainly comprising white-tailed deer, little red brocket and guinea pigs.

[110] The diet of the people consisted mostly of maize, tubers and potatoes; products of their rich agriculture, with protein sources white-tailed deer and the widely domesticated guinea pig.

[112][113] The settlements bordering the western part of the Eastern Hills of Bacatá—not the name of a city, yet meaning "outside the farmfields" in the version of Chibcha spoken by the Muisca, Muysccubun—were formed by from north to south Usaquén, Teusaquillo, and Usme.

[113] The forests of the Eastern Hills were considered sacred terrain in the Muisca religion, and temples were constructed to honour the main deities of the people; Chía (the Moon) and her husband Sué, the Sun.

[119][120] From here, setting up camp on the Suba Hills on April 5, the conquistadors continued southwestward towards Bacatá or Muequetá, located in modern Funza, the main settlement of the zipa Tisquesusa.

[119][121] After the foundation of Santa Fe de Bogotá, the principal colonial settlement was concentrated in the present-day centre of the city with minor expansion on both sides of the San Francisco River.

[122] One of the motives to establish the capital on the savanna was to take advantage of the favourably cool climate and fertility of the soil to grow the introduced Old World crop wheat.

[126] The beginning of the Republican period of the Eastern Hills was marked by the independence of the Spanish Crown and the declaration of Santa Fe as capital of Gran Colombia.

[122] The electrification and the use of gas and cocinol (a type of gasoline used domestically) halted the process of deforestation and marked the spontaneous regrowth of vegetation in the Eastern Hills.

[135] The invasive species Ulex europaeus (common gorse), an evergreen shrub that has been introduced in Colombia, highly affects the original ecology of the Eastern Hills.

[2] A series of fires in January and February 2016 consumed 18 hectares (44 acres) of the forests close to the neighbourhoods Aguas Claras and La Selva of the locality San Cristóbal.