Intriguing stuff.

It reminded me of something I'd read in Eliade. You'll be away ahead of me, so sorry for the repetition...

"This cosmic tree is similar to the Pillar, the support of the world, "axis of the universe" of the Altaic and northern European cosmologies. In these myths the tree expresses absolute reality in its aspect of norm, of a fixed point, supporting the cosmos. It is the supreme prop of all things. And, consequently, communication with heaven can only be effected near it, or by means of it."

This last is the thing that catches the imagination, the link to the human, although, of course, its like fishing with a banana - you just don't know. Anyway. I'll skip him back ten pages, or so, to where he says...

"...a Tree of Life (or Fountain of Life), placed in some inaccessible spot (at the end of the earth, at the bottom of the sea, in the land of darkness, on top of a very high hill, or in a "centre")..."

What would the importance of that 'inaccessible' pole have been to a local?