Message #192528

[Qoais]

What did happen to Sarmast Nikas, do you know?

Oh yeah - I don't think there was a Plato's Atlantis out in the Atlantic ocean.  Nor in the Med.  but that the inspiration for the story came from Mauritania, land of Atlas. 

You see - old people have a tendency to hang on to what THEY learned when young.  Take for instance the part telephone line.  Any of you old enough to know what that was?   It just means there was more than one customer on the same "line" - it was shared with several clients.  Telephones originally had a crank on the side, that you turned to contact the operator and she then put you through to whoever you were trying to reach.  Only she wasn't called "operator' back then.  When you turned the crank you were connected to "Central",so when someone answered you confirmed by asking "Central?"  Then the operator would say yes, how may I help you.  To the day he died, my uncle on the farm would always ask "Central?" when the operator picked up. 

In Plato's youth, Spain and N.W. Africa were thought to be islands.  When he told the story, he was still seeing them as islands in his minds eye, although by that time, I'm sure he had knowledge of the lay of the land at the western end of the Med.  I now understand in my early "golden years" how it is that we remember best what we learned when we were young.  It's another one of those things I'm going to take up with God when I get home.  Why is it we have to struggle to keep learning all our lives, and then when we get old enough to retire to enjoy the knowledge we gained, we forget it?