How the Cossacks ... Met Aliens

recap

In this episode, the Cossacks encounter aliens who are caricatures of themselves (Tur, Gray and Oko). The aliens need oil to lubricate the wheels in the engine of their flying saucer so that they can return to their home planet. The Cossacks offer the oil they have, but it is no good.

The Cossacks, together with the aliens, travel across Europe in an ox-drawn cart in search of oil for the spaceship. First, they visit Bulgaria, where they find rose oil and defend the city from enemies. It turns out that the flying saucer perfectly reflects all the bullets back at the attackers. The inhabitants of the city give the Cossacks rose oil in return for their rescue, but it is no good for the aliens.

Then the Cossacks reach Rome, where almost the entire forest has been cut down to heat the baths. The Cossacks, with the help of the aliens, lay a water pipe from the volcano to the baths. The Romans show their gratitude by giving them olive oil, which is not suitable for the aliens either.

The Cossacks arrive in Spain, where ships have just returned from America. The Cossack cart and oxen are mistaken for treasure and taken to the king's palace. There, the oxen eat all the gold, for which the Inquisition intends to burn them. Oko explains to the oxen what threat hangs over them, and the oxen, along with the cart, the Cossacks and the aliens, flee to Ukraine.

At the end of the journey, it turns out that the cart needs its wheel greased. And then it turns out that the Cossacks had the oil they were looking for all along — it was kolomaz. The aliens fly away, having first given Oko a lighter, Gray a stethoscope, and Tur a drill.

Discussion

The aliens are little green versions of Tur, Gray and Oko themselves. Did you enjoy this touch? Why do you think the animators made this choice?

What on Earth is kolomaz? Do you know how it was traditionally made?

The parting gifts: a lighter for Oko, a stethoscope for Gray and a drill for Tur. Is there any logic to who got what?

The whole episode seems to build to a classic moral: what you are searching for is often at home all along. Is that a fair reading? Do you find it satisfying or a bit of a cheat?

Anyway, how much did you enjoy this episode? How does it compare with the others we've watched?

Aliens are often depicted as flying in flying saucers.

Where do you think this idea originates from?

Can you think of any movies / books / shows that feature flying saucers?

Flying Saucers: a short history

The modern UFO era began on 24 June 1947, when an American pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine strange objects flying at incredible speed near Mount Rainier in Washington State. He described their movement as being like "a saucer skipping across water," and a journalist coined the term "flying saucer." The phrase caught on immediately, and within weeks, people all over the United States were reporting saucers of their own.

Just two weeks later, something crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The military initially announced that it had recovered a "flying disc," then quickly changed the story to a weather balloon. Decades later, it emerged that the object was part of a secret programme for detecting Soviet nuclear tests. Nevertheless, Roswell became the centre of endless conspiracy theories involving crashed spaceships and hidden alien bodies.

During the Cold War, UFO sightings multiplied dramatically. The US Air Force investigated thousands of reports under Project Blue Book, concluding that the vast majority were misidentified aircraft, balloons, planets, or natural phenomena. Psychologists have pointed out that the sightings peaked at times of public anxiety, when people were scanning the skies nervously anyway.

Aliens also conquered popular culture. From the 1950s onwards, cinema produced a steady stream of invaders, abductions and friendly visitors, and the image of the little green (or grey) humanoid with a big head and enormous eyes became instantly recognisable across the world.

In recent years, the subject has become surprisingly respectable again. Governments now prefer the term UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), and the US Congress has held public hearings on the subject. Official reports acknowledge that some sightings remain unexplained, though no evidence of extraterrestrial origin has ever been confirmed. The truth, as they say, is still out there.

Discussion

Had you heard of Roswell or Kenneth Arnold before?

Why do you think UFO sightings exploded during the Cold War in particular?

The USA utterly dominates UFO culture: Roswell, Area 51, abduction stories. Why there? Are there any famous UFO stories from your country?

Have you (or anyone you know) ever seen something in the sky you couldn't explain?

Recent government hearings have treated the topic seriously. Is this a healthy development, or does it just encourage conspiracy thinking?

Do you enjoy alien films? What's the best (or worst) one you've seen?

Now look again at the three places that the Cossacks visited.

Do you remember how they were depicted?

Which place did you enjoy most?

Bulgaria: The Valley of Roses

The cartoon wasn't joking: Bulgaria really is one of the world's great producers of rose oil. In the Valley of Roses, near the town of Kazanlak, damask roses have been cultivated for centuries. The petals must be picked by hand at dawn, before the heat of the day evaporates the precious oils, and it takes around three tonnes of petals to produce a single kilogram of rose oil. As a result, it is one of the most expensive oils in the world, prized by the perfume industry. Every June, the region celebrates its Rose Festival with parades, folk costumes and the crowning of a Rose Queen.

Rome: Baths and Firewood

Public baths were at the heart of Roman social life. They were not just places to wash, but places to exercise, do business, gossip and relax; some of the great imperial baths could hold thousands of visitors. The water and the rooms were heated by a clever underfloor system called a hypocaust, which required enormous quantities of firewood. Historians believe that supplying the baths and other industries contributed to serious deforestation around Roman cities, so the cartoon's image of a landscape stripped of trees is not far from the truth. The Cossacks' solution — piping heat directly from a volcano — is, sadly, not historically attested.

Spain: Treasure from the Americas

In the sixteenth century, Spanish treasure fleets carried astonishing quantities of gold and silver from the Americas back to Europe, making Spain, for a time, the richest and most powerful kingdom in the world. Paradoxically, the flood of precious metal helped cause rampant inflation, and much of the wealth flowed straight out of Spain to pay for wars and imported goods. This was also the age of the Spanish Inquisition, a religious court famous for its interrogations and public trials — though even at its most zealous, it does not appear to have prosecuted any oxen.

discussion

Which of the three stops did you find most interesting?

Were you surprised that the rose oil detail is historically accurate?

Does your country have any cultural tradition related to baths? Is it difficult for outsiders to get it?

Spain became rich on American gold and ended up poorer for it. Have you heard of the "resource curse"? Can you think of modern examples of countries suffering from their own wealth?

If the Cossacks visited your country, which period would it be in and would they see?

OK, SO THE WHOLE EPISODE IS ONE LONG QUEST FOR OIL...

... and, as such, we're going to look at 8 amazing facts about oil.

What do you think will appear on the list?

"Oil" is not one thing. The English word covers completely different substances: mineral oils (like petroleum), vegetable oils (like olive or sunflower), and essential oils (like rose oil). They share one key property: they don't mix with water.

Oil and water really don't mix. Water molecules are polar and stick to each other, while oil molecules are non-polar and get pushed out. That's why oil always forms a separate layer on top.

Rose oil is liquid luxury. With around three tonnes of hand-picked petals needed for one kilogram, genuine rose oil costs thousands of euros per kilo. A tiny drop is enough for an entire bottle of perfume.

Olive oil was the original sports prize. At the ancient Panathenaic Games in Athens, winners received large decorated jars filled with sacred olive oil, which was extremely valuable and could be sold on.

Before petroleum, the world ran on whales. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, lamps in Europe and America burned whale oil. The rise of petroleum in the 1850s helped end the whaling boom.

Crude oil is ancient sea life. Petroleum formed over millions of years from the remains of tiny marine organisms, buried, compressed and cooked deep underground. It is quite literally fossil fuel.

Petroleum is hiding in your bathroom. Beyond fuel, petroleum derivatives appear in plastics, asphalt, cosmetics, candles and even "baby oil," which is simply perfumed mineral oil.

Kolomaz is tar, basically. The wheel grease the Cossacks had all along was traditionally made by slowly burning birch or pine bark to extract a thick, black, sticky tar — a technology used across Eastern Europe for centuries. Chumak wagons squeaking across the steppe would have depended on it.

Discussion

Which of the facts (if any) did you find most interesting?

Were any of them a bit obvious?

When it comes to cooking, do you have strong opinions about oils? Olive vs sunflower vs butter? Is expensive extra virgin olive oil worth it?

The whale oil fact shows a technology completely replaced by a better one. Petroleum may face the same fate. What do you think the timeline will be?

Your language almost certainly has expressions with "oil" (or grease). English has "to oil the wheels," "burning the midnight oil," "like oil and water," "no oil painting"... Can you guess what they mean? Do you have equivalents?

Are we alone?

The universe contains something like two trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars, and we now know that planets are everywhere. The physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked: if that's true, then where is everybody? This puzzle is known as the Fermi Paradox.

Which is closest to your view?

a) Aliens exist and have probably already visited us

b) Aliens exist, but the distances are simply too vast for us ever to meet

c) Intelligent life is so improbable that we may effectively be alone

d) It's unknowable, and speculating is a waste of time

e) Something else

And a follow-up: if aliens did land tomorrow and asked you to explain what human culture is all about, what would you bring up?