Sometime around the year 1370, a group of alien explorers from another galaxy, the Nacene, accidentally damaged the atmosphere of the Ocampa's homeworld with their advanced technology, destroying its nucleogenic particles and making it impossible for the atmosphere to produce rain. Feeling responsible for this incident, known to the Ocampa as the Warming, the Nacene constructed a vast underground city and led the Ocampa below the planet's barren surface. Two of the aliens were left behind to act as caretakers and provided the Ocampa with food, water and other essentials of life. A subterranean barrier prevented access or egress to or from the underground city.
Around 2070 Suspiria, the female Nacene, tired of her duties and left the Ocampa system. Suspiria created a smaller array and took with her a number of Ocampa, whose departure was soon forgotten. These Ocampa were eventually taught how to lengthen their lives up to the remarkable age of 20. Over the ensuing centuries the Ocampa on Suspiria's array were taught to make use of the latent psycho-kinetic powers their race had long since forgotten. These powers gave them the ability to control the very force of life itself and to manipulate matter without touching it.
The Ocampa on the homeworld, who had no direct communication with the remaining Caretaker, continued to live underground for 500 generations until 2371, when the Caretaker died and the Array that had supplied the Ocampa with energy was destroyed by USS Voyager in order to prevent its capture by the Kazon-Ogla. Prior to his death, the Caretaker had increased the amount of energy sent to the underground city in order to provide for its operation for approximately five years, after which the Ocampa would have to venture to the surface to survive.
Some Ocampa believe that their race, while capable of telepathic communication, once possessed a far greater mental ability that was suppressed because of their dependence on the Caretaker. Most Ocampa bury their dead in the soil in the belief that their comra, the Ocampa equivalent of a soul or spirit, would travel into the afterlife. Ocampa are known to chose a mate and stay with them for their entire lives, supposedly eliminating distrust, betrayal, jealousy and envy.
Ocampa females enter the elogium around their fourth or fifth year. The elogium, which happens only once in a lifetime, prepares their bodies for childbirth. The first signs are a ravenous hunger which is followed by fever, high blood pressure and an elevated pulse. The first drastic physical change is the development of the mitral sac on the back, which is where the fetus will grow. The next physical change is the appearance of the ipasaphor on the hands. A sticky substance, the ipasaphor enables an Ocampa couple to remain bonded for the six days necessary to assure conception. Following the appearance of the ipasaphor, the Ocampa have approximately 50 hours to mate. The next stage of the elogium involves a ritual known as the rolisisin, in which a parent of the female must massage her feet (for approximately one hour) until her tongue swells. Stimulation of sympathetic nerves in the foot apparently triggers hormonal reactions that activate glandular activity in the tongue. It is during the rolisisin that the female's parent(s) acknowledge her true adulthood. Exposure to electrophoretic fields is capable of bringing about a false elogium in young Ocampa females.
The lifespan of the Ocampa is no longer believed to be nine years. Instead the Ocampa manifest very powerful teleketic powers. As demonstrated prematurely by Kes following an encounter with Species 8472, who possess tremendous telepathic capabilities, the Ocampa develop tremendous telekinetic abilities fairly rapidly. This gain in telekinetic power is controllable at all times, suggesting that it is the natural course of an Ocamapan life span. These new powers enable the Ocampa to see and control beyond the present physical plane into another dimension in which there is no distinction between matter and energy. As the telekinetic powers peak there is an uncontrollable pull for the Ocampan to shift to this new plane of exisitence. The energy patterns from the new plane are however, harmful to matter in the present physical plane causing structural instability at the subatomic level. Upon Kes's transfer to the new dimensional plane she gave the crew of the USS Voyager a 'gift' by hurling the ship over 9,500 light years, placing them out of Borg space.