Gaia vs Pachamama

Primordial goddess of the Earth, one of the first beings to emerge from Chaos. Gaia is the mother of the sky (Uranus), the sea (Pontus), the Titans, the Cyclopes, and, through the blood of Uranus, the Giants and the Furies.

Gaia emerged directly after Chaos as one of the first primordial beings. She alone brought forth Uranus (the Sky) and Pontus (the Sea), then united with Uranus to bear the Titans, Cyclopes, and Hecatoncheires, becoming the ancestral mother of nearly every subsequent generation of gods.

In Hesiod's *Theogony*, Gaia is among the very first entities to exist, arising after Chaos as "the ever-sure foundation of all." From herself alone she bore Uranus, the starry Sky, to cover her on every side, and Pontus, the sea. She then united with Uranus to bear the twelve Titans, the three one-eyed Cyclopes, and the three monstrous Hundred-Handed Ones (Hecatoncheires).

The Earth Mother of the Andes, recorded by colonial writers as receiving offerings of maize beer and coca in the fields, and still honored by Quechua and Aymara communities today.

No origin narrative survives in the colonial sources; she is the earth itself, addressed as mother.

Pachamama is named in the Jesuit José de Acosta's *Natural and Moral History of the Indies* (1590), which lists among the objects of Andean worship the earth, called Pachamama, and the sea, called Mamacocha, following the jurist Polo de Ondegardo's earlier inquiries. The extirpation literature of the early seventeenth century, such as Pablo José de Arriaga's *Extirpación de la idolatría del Pirú* (1621), describes offerings of maize beer and coca made to the earth in agricultural rites. She belonged less to the imperial theology of Cusco than to everyday agricultural practice, which is one reason her cult survived the destruction of the state religion.