After seeing this image recently, it occurred to me that rotations always have a preferred axis. If you considered the motion of the stars close to the earth's axis, they're not rotating about the earth at all but rather the earth's axis. In fact, at certain parts of the earth (the south pole), the sun will do the same thing.
This motion should have been extremely apparent to ancient peoples'. How can a geocentric theory explain this? I don't even see how the Ptolemaic theory could account for this.
This motion was apparent to ancient peoples. Ptolemaic theory accounted for this by positing the celestial spheres. The stars and planets were embedded in concentric spheres, each of a specified diameter. The spheres themselves rotated (about the Earth, or about the eccentric), and the planet or stars embedded into the sphere moved with it.
So a Ptolemist who saw your image would say that you were simply looking towards the north pole of the celestial sphere.