As with anything galactic, catching the sense of the rotation of the Milky Way takes time and repeated observations, reinterpretation and so on. It takes over 600,000 years just to go around it one degree. Observe, and then a few months later, and so on for several years.
A good way to understand galactic rotation is that the angle between the Galactic Center and the Andromeda Galaxy is slowly increasing. The angle now is about 121.17 degrees galactic longitude. Andromeda is something like 20 degrees off the galactic equator but that's okay.
The rate of increase is about six thousandths of one arc-second each year. In 170 years that is one arc-second, enough to show up on an ordinary modern surveyor's transit.
It IS significant in the human though because after all it always turns forward, and never backward
Apparently the Sea of Galilee was named after it, or vice versa - both after the Galatian religious group. From the north end, the Milky Way rises above that Sea and must have inspired a good deal of love

; galactic rotation is now figurative in both pregnancy and lactation. Common sense.