What is the meaning of Atlas? Concept, Definition of Atlas

Definition of Atlas


1 Meaning of Atlas

Atlas is the name, in Greek mythology, the giant who holds the Earth and the sky on his shoulders. Son of Iapetus and Clymene, Atlas is a titan who was sentenced by Zeus to load with the planet.
The term has several uses today. By extension to the mythological concept, atlas is the name of the first vertebra of the neck, which is in direct contact with the occipital bone and immediately holding the head.
Another very frequent use of atlas is in reference to the collection of maps (geographical, historical or otherwise) that are collected in a volume. The atlas, according to their contents, can be national, regional or universal. For example: "When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the maps of the atlas that my grandfather had in his library", "I'm going to go to the library to find an atlas: I have to consult a map of the Roman Empire", "Miguel is trying to find the people where we vacation in atlas".
The notion of atlas is common in astronomy. With that name, it is called a family of U.S. rockets, a moon of the planet Saturn and a space observatory of NASA which is in phase of study.
The Atlas of Guadalajara club is a team of Mexican soccer that competes in the first Division tournament. It was devoted champion in 1950-1951 and won several editions of the Copa Mexico.
Charles Atlas (1892-1972), finally, was a bodybuilder who invented a popular method of body-building that bears his name.


2. Definition of Atlas

It is known with the term of atlas to the set of maps from different regions of the planet that have been edited and published jointly in a book or collection. Atlas while it has nowadays lost importance facing the availability that Web of cartographic images, has historically been a type of material used and very important not only for cartographers if not also by navigators, astronomers, merchants and intellectuals who needed having different maps in group.
Since time immemorial man has done graphic projections of the universe in what is known as maps. When mapping began to develop massively from the knowledge of much of the planet at the time of the Renaissance, scientists, astronomers, cartographers and navigators should accumulate all that knowledge categorizing it and uniting it according to your interests or needs. Atlas then arises as a means to concentrate all the necessary mapping information.
The atlas may vary their rates according to the maps that contain. While some, the most common, are representations of the relief and the political division of the world and their countries, others may also show economic, climate, population data, and even differentiate themselves by the scope or detail them since some maps may be national and regional, that is, with more detail and approach. Other atlas can also be historical, which means that the maps that are included there will not be exactly equal to the current if not that will show us the political and territorial variations of space over time.
It is estimated that the name of atlas comes from the Greek mythological character that has been in the same name and Zeus entrusted to which punishment of carrying the world on his shoulders for eternity, interacting in this way with mapping from the presence of the Earth as a geographical unit to be represented on maps for more and better knowledge of the same. In addition, also it can be said that Atlas is the name given to the mountain range of runs from Tunisia to Morocco in North Africa. The time of further development of Greek culture, this region of Africa well could be understood as the end of the world, then perhaps the myth of the character.