What is the Inca earth mother goddess called?
Answer
Pachamama
Answer
Pachamama
The Inca earth mother goddess was Pachamama.
Pachamama is the Andean mother goddess associated with the earth, fertility, crops, animals, and the life-sustaining forces of nature. Her name is often translated as “Mother Earth,” although pacha in Quechua and Aymara can refer more broadly to the world, cosmos, space, time, or totality. She therefore represents more than soil alone.
In Andean religious life, Pachamama was understood as generous but also capable of withholding prosperity or causing destruction when people failed to maintain reciprocity with nature. Farmers and herders traditionally made offerings of food, drink, coca leaves, textiles, and sometimes animals. Ritual offerings to the earth remain important in parts of the Andes today.
Pachamama is sometimes confused with Mama Quilla, the moon goddess, or Mama Cocha, the sea goddess. Different myths give Andean deities overlapping family relationships, and later Spanish colonial influence encouraged connections between Pachamama and the Virgin Mary. Her continuing importance also makes her a symbol in modern Indigenous cultural and environmental movements.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026