Anasazi \,a-n3-'sa-ze\ culture North American Indian civilization that developed from c. ad 100 to historic times, centring on the area where the present-day boundaries of the U.S. states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colo¬ rado, and Utah intersect. Anasazi is the Navajo word for “Ancient Enemy”; the Hopi prefer the term Hisatsinom, meaning “Ancient People.” Anasazi is the term most commonly used to refer to the ancestors of con¬ temporary Pueblo Indian peoples. Anasazi civilization is customarily divided into several periods: Basket Maker (ad 100-500), Modified Bas¬ ket Maker (500-700), Developmental Pueblo (700-1050), Classic Pueblo (1050-1300), Regressive Pueblo (1300-1700), and Modern Pueblo (1700-the present). As among present-day Pueblo peoples, religion in the Anasazi culture was highly developed and centred on rites partly con¬ ducted in underground circular chambers called kivas. The best-known Anasazi ruins are the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde (Colo.) and Chaco Canyon (N.M.).
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Anastasia Russian Anastasiya Nikolayevna (b. June 18, 1901, Peterhof, Russia—d. July 16/17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) Grand duchess of Russia and youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. She was executed at age 17 with the other members of her immediate family by the Bolshe¬ viks in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the executions several women outside Russia claimed her identity, making her the subject of periodic popular conjecture and publicity. Some also claimed to be heir to the Romanov fortune held in Swiss banks. The most famous was Anna Anderson (d. 1984), a Pole married to a U.S. history professor; her claim was finally rejected in 1970, and later genetic tests proved there was no connection between Anderson and the Romanovs.
Anastasius \,an-3-'sta-zh3s\ I (b. 430?, Dyrrhachium, Epirus Vetus—d. July 9, 518, Constantinople) Byzantine emperor (491-518). Originally a bodyguard to Zeno, he succeeded Zeno as emperor and married his widow. Anastasius reformed the monetary and taxation systems and expelled rebel tribes from Constantinople, building a wall to protect the capital against raiders. He recognized Theodoric’s rule in Italy (497) but later sent a fleet to ravage the Italian coast. War with Persia (502-5) ended when he agreed to pay tribute to the Persian king. Anastasius accepted the Monophysite doctrine, a stand that caused unrest in Byzantium but fos¬ tered peace with Egypt and Syria.
Anath \'an-ath\ Chief western Semitic goddess of love and war, sister and helpmate to Baal, whom she retrieved from the land of the dead. One of the best-known of Canaanite deities, she was famous for her youthful vigour and ferocity in battle. In Egypt she was depicted nude, holding flowers and standing on a lion. During the Hellenistic Age, Anath and Astarte were merged into Atargatis.
Anatolia or Asia Minor Turkish Anadolu X.a-na-'do-liiN Peninsula forming the western extremity of Asia. It is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. Its eastern boundary is generally marked by the Anti-Taurus Moun¬ tains. Anatolia is roughly contiguous with the Asian portion of the mod¬ ern Republic of Turkey. Because of its location at the point where Asia and Europe meet, it has long been the scene of numerous migrations and con¬ quests. It was the original location of the kingdom of Hittites (c. 1700- 1180 bc). Later, Indo-European peoples, possibly Thracian, established the Phrygian kingdom. In the 6th century bc the Persian Achaemenian dynasty came to rule the area; it was conquered by Alexander the Great in 334 bc. Beginning in the 1st century bc, the area was absorbed into the Roman Republic and Empire. When the empire split in ad 395, Anatolia became part of the Byzantine Empire. The area endured invasions by Arabs, Turks, Crusaders, Mongols, and the Turkic army of Timur before the Otto¬ man Empire established full control in the 15th century. From 1923 its his¬ tory was that of modern Turkey.
Anatolian languages Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken in Anatolia in the 2nd-lst millennia bc. The attested Anatolian languages are Hittite, Palaic, Luwian (Luvian), Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lycian, and Lydian. Hittite, by far the most copiously attested of the group, is known chiefly from a vast archive of cuneiform tablets found in 1905 at Hattusas (now Bogazkoy, in north-central Turkey), the capital of the Hittite empire; Hittite texts date from the 16th to 13th century bc. By the late Roman or early Byzantine period at the latest, Anatolian languages had all become extinct. Several non-Indo-European languages of ancient Anatolia, all known from cuneiform texts, are also sometimes considered Anatolian languages: Hattie, spoken in central Anatolia before the com¬ ing of the Hittites and known solely from words and texts preserved by Hittite scribes; Hurrian, spoken in the 2nd millennium bc in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia; and Urartian (Urartean), known from northwestern Anatolian texts of the 9th-7th centuries bc.
anatomy Biological field that deals with bodily structures as revealed by dissection. Herophilus first laid the factual groundwork for gross anatomy, the study of structures large enough to see without a microscope. Galen’s ideas were the authority for anatomy in Europe until Andreas Vesauus’s methods placed it on a firm foundation of observed fact. The microscope permitted the discovery of tiny structures (e.g., capillaries and cells), the subject of microscopic anatomy. Crucial advances in this area— including the microtome, which slices specimens into extremely thin sec¬ tions, and staining—led to the new fields of cytology and histology. Electron microscopy opened up the study of subcellular structures, and X-ray diffraction gave rise to the new subspecialty of molecular anatomy.
Comparative anatomy compares similar structures in different animals to see how they have changed with evolution.
Anaxagoras \,an-ak-'sag-3-r3s\ (b. c. 500, Clazomenae, Anatolia—d. c. 428 bc, Lampsacus) Greek philosopher. Though only a few fragments of his writings have survived, he is remembered for his cosmology and for his discovery of the true cause of eclipses. His cosmology grew out of the efforts of earlier pre-Socratics to explain the physical universe in terms of a single element. The most original aspect of his system was his doctrine of nous (“mind,” or “reason”), according to which the cosmos, including all living things, was created by mind in a process of attraction of “like to like”; mind also accounts for the power of living things to extract nourishment from surrounding substances.
Anaximander Xo-'nak-so-.man-doA (b. 610 bc, Miletus—d. 546/545 bc) Greek philosopher, often called the founder of astronomy. He appar¬ ently wrote treatises on geography, astronomy, and cosmology that sur¬ vived for several centuries and made a map of the known world. He was the first thinker to develop a cosmol¬ ogy. A rationalist, he prized symme¬ try and used geometry and mathematical proportions to help map the heavens; his theories thus departed from earlier, more mystical conceptions and foreshadowed the achievements of later astronomers.
Whereas earlier theories had sug¬ gested Earth was suspended or sup¬ ported from elsewhere in the heavens, Anaximander asserted that Earth remained unsupported at the centre of the universe because it had no reason to move in any direction.
Anaximenes X.an-ak-'sim-o-.nezX (fl. c. 545 bc) Greek philosopher of nature. With Thales and Anaximander, he is one of three Milesian thinkers (see Miletus) traditionally considered the first philosophers of the West¬ ern world. He defined the essence of matter as aer (“air”) and explained the densities of various types of matter in terms of varying degrees of condensation of moisture. His writings no longer exist except as quoted by later authors.