From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An atlas is a collection of maps, typically 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 formats. In addition to
presenting geographic features and political boundaries, many atlases often
feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics.
"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.
- King Atlas, a mythical King of Mauretania, 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 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 is a figure from Greek
mythology. He is the son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene (or Asia), and brother of Prometheus. Atlas was
punished by Zeus 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. One of
Heracles's labours was to collect the apples of the Hesperides.
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, Homer 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, on his shoulders. The
earliest such depiction is the Farnese Atlas, 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.
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 from other languages.
Particularly, German mapmakers use the transliterations from Cyrillic
developed by the Czechs which are hardly used in
English-speaking countries.
Online
Atlas of Canada
Natural Resources Canada
(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 website, the Natural Resources 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 environment, people and society, the economy, history, climate change, freshwater and health, as well as reference, archival
and topographic maps. Also available through
the Atlas of Canada website is the Learning Resources tab, which
provides interactive 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 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 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, 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
Some 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)
- The Brittania (John Ogilby, 1670-1676)
- 18th century
- 19th century
- 20th century
See also
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
Sources
Online atlases
History of atlases
Historical atlases online
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