Before the PanGaea Cooperative existed, there existed a movement of PanGaean philosophy. This philosophy was based upon the Gaea hypothesis of Lovelock, which stated that the Biosphere of the Earth was itself a complex self regulating life form, that the flora and fauna, including humanity, were a part of that greater organism. The Gaea hypothesis itself became (to the dismay of some scientists) a great inspiration to the 'Goddess' movement.

The Goddess movement was seen by many as freedom cry from the male dominated religions the world had existed under for the past couple of thousand years. It was refreshing and full of new inspiration.

However, still others were perceptive enough to see the pendulum simply swinging in the other direction, that total matriarchy would be as tyranical as total patriarchy. Different groups solved this dilema, some by introducing a 'God', although often only as a consort to the 'Goddess', whilst others took on images of Hermaphrodites as a symbol of transcendance of gender bias, taking hermaphroditic images from such diverse sources as the drawing of 'Baphomet' by Eliphas Levi, to pictures from Hermetic Alchemy, and images of Ardhanarishwara, the union of Shiva and Shakti in Hinduism.

Early in the 21st century, someone combined the pagan Goddess and consort idea with the Hermaphrodite idea and the Gaea hypothesis, and reasoned that since the biosphere of the Earth contains both sexes, it follows that if it is an organism it must be Hermaphrodite. Therefore they renamed the Gaea hypothesis, the PanGaea hypothesis, a combination of the pagan nature god 'Pan' and the pagan earth goddess 'Gaea'. The term could also be translated as meaning 'All-Earth', which reflected the anti-nationalist, anti-statist political vision that the PanGaean philosophy seemed to associate with.

Scientists were keen to adopt the term PanGaea Hypothesis, mostly in order to distance themselves from the New Age Goddess movement which they never liked anyway. However, true to form, the New Age movement followed suit a few years later, always keen to try and misapply popular science to defend whatever trend they find fashionable at the time.

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