Archaeoastronomy in the British Isles - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 77

F IG . 4.21 ( a , b ) Polynesian Star-Ropes (After David Lewis, “The Voyaging
Stars [ 14 ]”)
Now, among equatorial peoples - in Polynesia, for instance -
it is quite common for the sky to be divided up not into constella-
tion blocks, as in higher latitudes, but into parallel “ropes” of stars
crossing the sky from horizon to horizon (Chap. 3 and Fig. 4.21 )
[ 14 ] . Interestingly, the Mesopotamian myths speak of the sky in
this way, as if compiled before some ancient northerly migra-
tion. Is it conceivable that the megalith builders' viewpoint was
far enough north for them to think of the stars as strung along a
great rope, coiling down from the pole to the equator? The figure
of Draco, when the pole lay near Thuban as the Avebury circles
were built, might have prompted that visualization.
In medieval times, the ascending and descending nodes of
the Moon's orbit, around which eclipses occur, were known as the
head (Caput) and tail (Cauda) of the Dragon, although the constel-
lation doesn't reach the ecliptic at either end. But perhaps the twin
linked spirals, coiling in opposite directions, show a realization
that the world was round and that, in the other hemisphere, the
“rope” would turn the other way.