Marcella Oleska, age 12, of Dotham, Ala., for her question:

WHEN WAS THE FIRST ATLAS PUBLISHED?

An atlas is a collection of maps or charts bound into a volume. The earliest was produced by a Greek scholar named Ptolemy in about 150' A.D. and was rediscovered and printed in Europe in the 15th century.

The first modern atlas, "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum," meaning "Theater of the Earth," was published in 1570 by a Flemish cartographer named Abraham Ortelius.

The term "atlas" is derived from the custom of ornamenting the title pages of early map collections with a representation of the Greek mythological figure Atlas holding the earth on his shoulders. The term "atlas" was first used in 1585 by Gerhardus Mercator in the title of a collection of his maps "Atlas Sive Cosmographicre," which means "Atlas, Description of the Universe."

An atlas may cover the entire world or specific regions and frequently contains indexes of place names, populations and other factual information. An atlas may also be devoted to special subjects, such as climate, agriculture, diseases, languages or astronomy.