Correct. And if you consider that humans all over the world can observe the Milky Way band, there is NO reasons to be critical, but nitt-picking reasons towards comments
Again, the “band” you see in the night sky (unaided, hence naked eye) isn’t the entire Milky Way.
The “band” that everyone can observe is only a small portion of local stars, local star clusters, local nebulae and a great deal of interstellar dust and gas.
You can see the glow because the ultraviolet radiation, coming from stars, have ionised the gases, which are mostly consisted of hydrogen, and some helium and other trace elements of other gases. This glow is very similar to glow from nebulae, gases ionised by stars’ radiations.
The glow doesn’t come from the galactic centre of the Milky Way, because large amount of dust from the Sagittarius spiral make visible wavelength impossible to penetrate.
Do you really think the ancient Egyptians have infrared or x-ray visions to see through the dust and see the centre?
Second. When you out watching the night sky, without any assistance (eg binoculars, telescope, filters, etc), you would only see portion of sky, depending on your geographical location and time, you would see only see between 2000 and 2500 stars, if you are capable of counting them.
(I don’t know where you lived, so I don’t know your locality.)
The total number of stars counted by astronomers, visible to the naked eye, comes to 9096 stars. That’s no where near the possible 100-400 billion stars in the Milky Way.
If you had optical telescope, you would see more, where you lived. And if you have more power telescope than the one that you can afford domestically, then you will see more stars still. And if you were able to built a radio telescope, or just use one already constructed, you will see even further.
My point is that no one can see more, because with the naked eye, our perception is limited to the visible wavelengths.
The other wavelengths can be be seen with filters (eg infrared, near infrared) or with radio devices (eg microwave, x-ray, etc).
But the ancient astronomers have had no such equipments or devices, so to understand their capabilities, if you or I were to walk in their shoes, so to speak, we must observed the night sky with the naked eye.
And we would have the same limitations as the ancient astronomers. Even if stars are not covered by cosmic dust, from our view, there are many more stars in the Milky Way that we cannot see because of the distance.
Even our resident astronomer (mostly retired), Regiomontanus, agreed with us (me, Polymath257 and ecco) about the observable band of the Milky Way, is only view of some local stars and cosmic dust and gas, is only small portion of the Milky Way:
Hello. Right, when you look up at night you can only see a small fraction of our galaxy. The band of stars (our galaxy) is just a small part, mainly of the arm we embedded in (Orion arm).
To see very far into the disc of our galaxy (like to the center, see movie above) we need to use, for example, radio telescopes. At such wavelengths much of the obscuring debris is fairly transparent.
The most distant individual star we can see (unaided, hence naked eye, of course) is V762 CAS, located in the Cassiopeia constellation. It is about 16,300 light years away from Earth. Any individual star beyond this distance, we cannot see.
Of course, that isn’t the most distant object we can see, naked eye. The Triangulum Galaxy about 3 million light years away, and Andromeda Galaxy about 2 million light years away, are the two most distant objects that we could see in our night sky. These two are galaxies, not individual stars, so they are larger objects than the stars, hence we can see them.
I, of course, couldn’t see Triangulum Galaxy, even with my glasses on, because my eyesight isn’t what they used to be.
And neither we, nor the ancient stargazers, can see the entire Milky Way, let alone the galactic centre. And we cannot see all the distant stars in the Milky Way, because of our eyes’ limitations, so we can only view stars in rather close proximity to Earth.
I have made each of these points before, but you cannot seem to grasp, we can never see the entire Milky Way, because the “band” we do see in our night sky isn’t the entire Milky Way. The “band” is only a tiny fraction of the Milky Way.
How many times must we say all this, before you understand this? How many times must we tell you that the observable “band” isn’t the entire Milky Way, for you to admit you have been mistaken?