Mou-nyamy, the Earth Mother, is the senior of the Nganasan 'mothers of the world' (nguo), the supreme female powers who personify the elements of the cosmos. As the source of all living things she gives birth to humans, animals and plants and receives them back into the ground at death. Like the other elemental mothers she was held to be too great for ordinary people to address directly, so sacrifices and appeals were made to her for fertility and prosperity, with the shaman (ngo) acting as intermediary. She is documented across the classic ethnographies of the northernmost Samoyedic people of the Taymyr Peninsula.