Atlas: From titan to bone

We've all heard the word atlas before. Either to refer to a set of cartographic maps (World Atlas) or also to refer to a set of images explained in great detail (Atlas of Human Anatomy), you may have heard a Metallica song with that name (or Coldplay), if you didn’t fall asleep in history class you probably heard the Titan from Greek mythology. But this time I want to talk about a bone of great importance and a very interesting curiosity of the human body. Today I will tell you how a Titan became a bone.    

First of all, let’s talk about the Titan. Atlas, son of Iapetus and Clymene lived many years before the birth of the mankind. He had an important role in the mythological event known as “Titanomachy” fighting alongside with the Titans as one of the leaders of that “team”. To summarize to those who do not know, the Titanomachy was a war waged between the Titans (led by Chronos) and the Olympians (led by Zeus). The Olympians won the war and, in punishment, Zeus imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus (located even deeper than the underworld) forever. However, Atlas suffered a different punishment. Zeus watched as Uranus (the sky) was almost destroyed by the great war between the Titan and Olympians, so the Father of the Gods made Atlas hold the sky forever. We usually see him portrayed as a man with long hair and white beard holding the planet Earth.

Now, let’s talk about the bone. The Atlas, a.k.a first cervical vertebra of the spine (C1). Its function is to articulate with the occipital bone to receive all the weight of the head, ergo, it is the vertebra that supports the head. When it was first described, it was compared to the titan in its most famous representation which, as I said before, is a man holding the planet like the bone supports the skull.

We can already understand the analogy: The vertebra (Atlas, the titan) holds the head (the world, the planet earth).

At this point, you learned a curious fact (that surely you didn’t know) about our perfect human body. Just like this, there are many more interesting and fun little facts about our body that you do not know yet, but I will be posting them for the enjoyment of all of you! I hope you enjoyed reading this little post as much as I had enjoyed writing it.