An atlas is a collection of maps A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes; it is typically a map of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets (and their satellites) in the solar system. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only use traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, formats. In addition to presenting geographic Geography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.). Four historical traditions in geographical research are the spatial analysis of natural and features and political Politics , is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical Geopolitics is the art and practice of using political power over a given territory. Traditionally, the term has applied primarily to the impact of geography on politics, but its usage has evolved over the past century to encompass a wider connotation, social The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms . It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary, religious Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs and economic An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area, the labor, capital and land resources, and the economic agents that socially participate in the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area. A given economy is the end result of a process that involves its technological evolution, statistics Statistics is the formal science of making effective use of numerical data relating to groups of individuals or experiments. It deals with all aspects of this, including not only the collection, analysis and interpretation of such data, but also the planning of the collection of data, in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.
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"Atlas" mythology
The origin of the term atlas is a common source of misconception, perhaps because two different mythical figures named 'Atlas' are associated with map making Cartography is the study and practice of making maps (also can be called mapping). Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.
- King Atlas, a mythical King of Mauretania In antiquity Mauretania was originally an independent Berber kingdom on the Mediterranean coast of north Africa , corresponding to western Algeria, northern Morocco and Spanish Plazas de soberanía. The Mauri people were named for the Greek word mavros, black. Some of the earliest recorded history relates to Phoenician and Carthaginian settlements, was also known as Aparajit in Hindusim, according to legend, a wise philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who supposedly made the first celestial globe. It was this Atlas that Gerardus Mercator was referring to when he first used the name 'Atlas', and he included a depiction of the King on the title-page.
- However, the more widely known Atlas In Greek mythology, Atlas was the primordial Titan who supported the heavens from the ranges now called the Atlas Mountains. Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Klyménē (Κλυμένη): is a figure from Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece. Modern scholars refer to the myths and study them in an attempt to throw light on the. He is the son of the Titan In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. In the first generation of twelve Titans the males were Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius and Iapetus and the females were Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea and Themis. The second generation of Iapetus In Greek mythology, Iapetus, also Iapetos or Japetus , was a Titan, the son of Uranus and Gaia, and father (by an Oceanid named Clymene or Asia) of Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius and through Prometheus, Epimetheus and Atlas an ancestor of the human race and Clymene (or Asia), and brother of Prometheus In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of human-kind known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. Zeus then punished him for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day. Atlas was punished by Zeus Zeus is the King of the Gods in Greek mythology. Zeus was viewed as a king who oversaw the universe. In Hesiod's Theogony, he assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods. He is also called the "Father of Gods and men", according to Hesiod's Theogony. He ruled the Olympians of and made to bear the weight of the heavens (the idea of Atlas carrying the Earth isn't correct according to the original myth) on his back, on top of Mt. Tam. One of Heracles's labours was to collect the apples of the Hesperides, guarded by Ladon. Heracles went to Atlas and reasoned with him. Eventually, Atlas agreed to collect the apples, and Heracles was left to carry the weight. Atlas tried to leave Heracles there, but Heracles tricked him and Atlas was left to carry the heavens forever. In his epic Odyssey The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon. Indeed it is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature. It was probably composed near the end of, Homer Homer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. The ancient Greeks generally believed that Homer was an historical individual, but most scholars are skeptical: no reliable biographical information has been handed down from classical antiquity, and the poems themselves refers to this Atlas as "one who knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps the tall pillars who hold heaven and earth asunder".
In works of art, this Atlas is represented as carrying the heavens or the Celestial Sphere In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an imaginary sphere of arbitrarily large radius, concentric with the Earth and rotating upon the same axis. All objects in the sky can be thought of as projected upon the celestial sphere. Projected upward from Earth's equator and poles are the celestial equator and the celestial poles. The, on his shoulders. The earliest such depiction is the Farnese Atlas The Farnese Atlas is a 2nd-century Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of Atlas kneeling with a globe weighing heavily on his shoulders. It is the oldest extant statue of the Titan of Greek mythology, who is represented in earlier vase-painting, and more importantly the oldest known representation of the celestial sphere. The sculpture is, now housed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli in Naples, Italy. This figure is frequently found on the cover or title-pages of atlases. This is particularly true of atlases published by Dutch publishers during the second half of the seventeenth century. The image became associated with Dutch merchants, and a statue of this figure adorns the front of the World Trade Center in Amsterdam Amsterdam (pronounced /ˈæmstərdæm/; Dutch [ɑmstərˈdɑm] ) is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The city, which had a population (including suburbs) of 1.36 million on 1 January 2008, comprises the northern part of the Randstad, the sixth-largest metropolitan.
The first publisher to associate the Titan Atlas with a group of maps was Lafreri, on the title-page to "Tavole Moderne Di Geografia De La Maggior Parte Del Mondo Di Diversi Autori ...". However, he did not use the word "atlas" in the title of his work.
Modern atlas
With the coming of the global market, publishers in different countries can reprint maps from plates made elsewhere. This means that the place names on the maps often use the designations or abbreviations of the language of the country in which the feature is located, to serve the widest market. For example, islands near Russia have the abbreviation "O." for "ostrov", not "I." for "island". This practice differs from what is standard for any given language, and it reaches its extremity concerning transliterations Transliteration is the practice of converting a text from one writing system into another in a systematic way. An example of transliteration is typing an e-mail using a qwerty keyboard and sending it in a non-qwerty script from other languages. Particularly, German mapmakers use the transliterations from Cyrillic Cyrillic script is an alphabet developed in the 9th century in Bulgaria, and used in the Slavic national languages of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian, Montenegrin and Ukrainian, and in the non-Slavic languages of Moldovan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Tuvan, and Mongolian. It also was used in past languages of Eastern developed by the Czechs Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian until the late 19th century in English. Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak and, to a lesser extent, to Polish and Sorbian which are hardly used in English-speaking countries.
Online Atlas of Canada
Natural Resources Canada The land occupied by Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three (NRC) has a government website (http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/com/index-eng.php), that provides an online atlas to the general public, which they can interact with and gain knowledge from. Similar to the Statistics Canada Statistics Canada is the Canadian federal government agency commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. The bureau is commonly called StatCan or StatsCan although StatCan is the official abbreviation. It has regularly been considered the best statistical website, the Natural Resources Natural resources occur naturally within environments that exist relatively undisturbed by mankind, in a natural form. A natural resource is often characterized by amounts of biodiversity existent in various ecosystems. Natural resources are derived from the environment. Many of them are essential for our survival while others are used for Canada site offers a wide range of free download-able data through the linked site Geo Gratis. The Atlas of Canada has been around since 1906 and offers maps on the natural environment The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof.[citation needed], people and society, the economy An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area, the labor, capital and land resources, and the economic agents that socially participate in the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area. A given economy is the end result of a process that involves its technological evolution,, history History is the study of the human past. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. Historians debate the nature of history and its, climate change Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. It can be a change in the average weather or a change in the distribution of weather events around an average . Climate change may be limited to a specific region, or may occur across the whole Earth, freshwater Freshwater or fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Freshwater is characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. The term specifically excludes seawater and and health At the time of the creation of the World Health Organization , in 1948, health was defined as being "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity", as well as reference, archival An archive is a collection of historical records, as well as the place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime and topographic maps A topographic map is a type of map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief, usually using contour lines in modern mapping, but historically using a variety of methods. Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features. Also available through the Atlas of Canada website is the Learning Resources tab, which provides interactive In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels: Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages; Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message; and non-interactive lesson plans for grades as low as 6 and as high as 12. In cartography many scholars are interested in how information or phenomenon A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. In popular usage, a phenomenon often refers to an extraordinary event. In scientific usage, a phenomenon is any event that is observable, however commonplace it might be, even if it requires the use of instrumentation to observe it. For example, in physics, a phenomenon may be a from the real world can be better represented on a map [1]. The key word being re-present, since maps bring to life a situation that has already occurred in the past to the present. The Atlas of Canada complies with cartography Cartography is the study and practice of making maps (also can be called mapping). Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively in that it is targeted toward educating youths in elementary and high school, which would develop their cognitive representation skills. Although there are some aspects of the website that can be improved upon. These are mostly fine details, but some times the smallest changes make the largest impacts and part of growing and developing a better functioning education tool requires improvements. Pro - Downs and Liben, 1988 [2] write about maps being opaque and it requires skills, which are taught before they can be read and understand properly. They believe that something that does not have prior context has to be learned because without cognitive representations misinterpretations of maps is easily done. The Online Atlas of Canada supports this really well by providing numerous lessons plans under its Learning Resources tab Con - The Atlas of Canada is largely promoted as a learning tool for students to become more knowledgeable in GIS A geographic information system , or geographical information system, is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that are linked to location. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography and database technology. GIS systems are used in cartography, remote sensing, land surveying, utility management,, poor colors used in their thematic maps could be influencing bad practices [3]. Some of the sites thematic maps have unsatisfying color schemes based on the fact that the colors are too close in richness, making it difficult to decipher one color from the color above or below it. One of the ways Harrower and Brewer suggest to combat this issue is to utilize an online tool called the ColourBrewer, which assists map makers in picking the best suitable colours.
Selected general atlases
Main article: List of atlasesSome cartographically or commercially important atlases include the following:
- 17th century and earlier
- Atlas Novus (Blaeu, Netherlands, 1635–1658)
- Atlas Maior (Blaeu, Netherlands, 1662–1667)
- Cartes générales de toutes les parties du monde (France, 1658–1676)
- Dell'Arcano del Mare (England/Italy, 1645–1661)
- Piri Reis map (Ottoman Empire, 1570–1612)
- Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Ortelius, Netherlands, 1570–1612)
- Klencke Atlas (1660; world's largest book)
- The Brittania (John Ogilby, 1670–1676)
- 18th century
- Atlas Nouveau (Amsterdam, 1742)
- Britannia Depicta (London, 1720)
- Cary's New and Correct English Atlas (London, 1787)
- 19th century
- Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas (Germany, 1881–1939; in the UK as Times Atlas of the World, 1895)
- Rand McNally Atlas Rand McNally is an American publisher of maps, atlases, and globes for travel, reference, commercial, and educational uses. It also provides online consumer street maps and directions, as well as commercial transportation routing software and mileage data. The company is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois with an additional (United States, 1881–present)
- Stielers Handatlas (Germany, 1817–1944)
- 20th century
- Atlante Internazionale del Touring Club Italiano (Italy, 1927–1978)
- Atlas Mira (Russia, 1937–present)
- Gran Atlas Aguilar (Spain, 1969/1970)
- Historical Atlas of China (China)
- National Geographic Atlas The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history of the World (United States, 1963–present)
- Pergamon World Atlas (1962/1968)
- Times Atlas of the World (United Kingdom, 1895–present)
See also
- Atlas of Our Changing Environment
- Bird atlas A bird atlas is an ornithological work that attempts to provide information on the distribution, abundance, long-term change as well as seasonal patterns of bird occurrence and usually represented in the form of maps. They often involve the use of large numbers of volunteers who help cover a large geographic region and the methods used are
- Cartography Cartography is the study and practice of making maps (also can be called mapping). Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively
- Cartopedia
- Cybercartography
- Fictitious entry Fictitious entries, also known as fake entries, Mountweazels, and Nihilartikels, are deliberately incorrect entries or articles in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps and directories. Entries in reference works normally originate from a reliable external source, but no such source exists for a fictitious entry
- Geography Geography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.). Four historical traditions in geographical research are the spatial analysis of natural and
- Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free (for non-commercial use), that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API. It offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by
- Manifold In mathematics, more specifically in differential geometry and topology, a manifold is a mathematical space that on a small enough scale resembles the Euclidean space of a specific dimension, called the dimension of the manifold. Thus a line and a circle are one-dimensional manifolds, a plane and sphere are two-dimensional manifolds, and so forth
- NASA World Wind World Wind is a free and open source virtual globe developed by NASA and the open source community for use on personal computers. Old versions need Microsoft Windows but the more recent Java version, World Wind Java, is cross platform and provides a suite of demo apps. The World Wind Java version was awarded NASA Software of the Year for 2009. The
- Star atlas
- TerraServer-USA
- Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
References
- ^ Harrower, M. (2007) The cognitive limits of animated maps. Cartographic. Vol. 42, No. 4, pgs. 349-357
- ^ Downs, Roger and Liben, Lynn. (1988). Through a map darkly: Understanding maps as representations. The genetic epidemiologist; the quarterly journal of the Jean Piaget Society. Vol. 16, pgs. 11-18
- ^ Harrower M.; Brewer C.A. (2003). ColorBrewer.org: An online tool for selecting color schemes for maps. Cartographic Journal. Vol. 40, No. 1, Pgs. 27-37
External links
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Atlas |
Sources
Online atlases
- ÖROK-Atlas Online: Atlas on spatial development in Austria
- Geography Network
- MapChart EarthAtlas, free online atlas with interactive maps about topics like demography, economy, health and environment.
- National Geographic MapMachine
History of atlases
- Atlases, at the US Library of Congress site - a discussion of many significant atlases, with some illustrations. Part of Geography and Maps, an Illustrated Guide.
Historical atlases online
- Centennia Historical Atlas required reading at the US Naval Academy for over a decade.
- Historical map web sites list, Perry-Castañeda Library, University of Texas
- Ryhiner Collection Composite atlas with maps, plans and views from the 16th-18th centuries, covering the globe, with about 16,000 images in total.
Other links
- Google Earth: a visual 3D interactive atlas.
- NASA's World Wind software.
- Wikimapia a wikiproject designed to describe the entire world.
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