ATAVISM (from Lat. atavus, a great-great-great-grandfather or ancestor), the term given in biology to the reproduction in a living person or animal of the characteristics of an ancestor more remote than its parents (see [Heredity]). Loosely used, it connotes a reversion to an earlier type. Individuals reproduce unexpectedly the traits of earlier ancestors, and ethnologists and criminologists frequently explain by “atavism” the occurrence of degenerate species of man; but the whole subject is complicated by other possible explanations of such phenomena, included in the scientific study of normal “variation.”
ATBARA (Bahr-el-Aswad, or Black River), the most northern affluent of the river Nile, N.E. Africa. It rises in Abyssinia to the N.W. of Lake Tsana, unites its waters with a number of other rivers which also rise in the Abyssinian highlands, and flows north-west 800 m. till its junction at Ed Damer with the Nile (q.v.). The battle of the Atbara, fought near Nakheila, a place on the north bank of the river about 30 m. above Ed Damer, on the 8th of April 1898, between the khalifa’s forces under Mahmud and Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian army, resulted in the complete defeat of the Mahdists and the capture of their leader, and paved the way for the decisive battle of Omdurman on the 2nd of September following (see [Egypt]: Military Operations).
ATCHISON, a city and the county-seat of Atchison county, Kansas, U.S.A., on the west bank of the Missouri river, which is navigable at this point but is utilized comparatively little for commerce. Pop. (1890) 13,963; (1900) 15,722, of whom 2508 were of negro descent and 1308 were foreign-born; (1910) 16,429. Atchison is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Missouri Pacific railways. The city is the seat of Midland College (Lutheran, 1887), St Benedict’s College (Roman Catholic, 1858) for boys, Mt. Scholastics Academy (Roman Catholic) for girls, and Western Theological Seminary (Evangelical-Lutheran, 1893); a state soldiers’ orphans’ home is also located here. Atchison’s situation and transportation facilities make it an important supply-centre, its trade in grains and live-stock being particularly large; it has large railway machine shops, and its principal manufactures are flour, furniture, lumber, hardware and drugs. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $2,093,469 in 1900 to $4,052,274 in 1905, or 93.6%. Atchison was founded in 1854 by pro-slavery partisans, and was named in honour of their leader, David Rice Atchison, a United States senator. The city was quickly surpassed by Leavenworth in commercial importance, and during the Kansas struggle was never of great political importance. Its first city charter was granted in 1858. The Atchison Globe (established 1878) is one of the best-known of western papers.
ATE, in Greek mythology, the personification of criminal folly, the daughter of Zeus and Eris (Strife). She misled even Zeus to take a hasty oath, whereby Heracles became subject to Eurystheus. Zeus thereupon cast her by the hair out of Olympus, whither she did not return, but remained on earth, working evil and mischief (Iliad, xix. 91). She is followed by the Litae (Prayers), the old and crippled daughters of Zeus, who are able to repair the evil done by her (Iliad, ix. 502). In later times Ate is regarded as the avenger of sin (Sophocles, Antigone, 614, 625).
See J. Girard, Le Sentiment religieux en Grèce (1869); J.F. Scherer, De Graecorum Ates Notione atque Indole (1858); E. Berch, Bedeutung der Ate bei Aeschylos (1876); C. Lehrs, Populare Aufsatze aus dem Alterthum (1875); L. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882).