Plural of atlas; collections of maps or charts, or the first vertebra of the spine.
Named after Atlas, the Greek Titan condemned to hold up the heavens. First applied to map collections in the 16th century because early atlases featured Atlas supporting the world on their title pages. The anatomical usage refers to the first vertebra 'supporting' the skull.
It's poetic that we named our map books after Atlas, the mythological figure who literally carried the world - every atlas symbolically carries the world between its pages. The neck vertebra connection shows how anatomists loved using mythological metaphors for body parts that 'support' important structures.
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