Researchers, historians and writers in the documentary claim Russia became a convenient target after the Great Schism. Throughout history, European rulers and philosophers constructed the image of an uncivilised nation, unfit for talks. For example, French philosophers Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau argued if Russia could become a civilised country or if it was destined to remain barbarian.

The mythical ferocious Russian bear and the tale of bad Russia still feature in the media and contribute to modern russophobia. The documentary traces the origins of the anti-Russian narrative in the West and explores who benefits from it.

Mettan defines Russophobia as the promotion of negative stereotypes about Russia that associate the country with despotism, treachery, expansion, oppression and other negative character traits. In his view, it is "not linked to specific historical events" but "exists first in the head of the one who looks, not in the victim's alleged behavior or characteristics."

Like anti-semitism, Mettan writes, "Russophobia is a way of turning specific pseudo-facts into essential one-dimensional values, barbarity, despotism, and expansionism in the Russian case in order to justify stigmatization and ostracism."

The origins of Russophobic discourse date back to a schism in the Church during the Middle Ages when Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Roman empire and modified the Christian liturgy to introduce reforms execrated by the Eastern Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine empire.

Mettan writes that "the Europe of Charlemagne and of the year 1000 was in need of a foil in the East to rebuild herself, just as the Europe of the 2000s needs Russia to consolidate her union."

The classic British anti-war film The Charge of the Light Brigade will be fifty years old next year. Who would have thought the crude Russophobia of the 1850s, which Tony Richardson expertly satirized, would be back in vogue half a century later?

The idea history is cyclical and not linear is probably not disproved by looking back to what happened to Britain in the 1850s.

Then, as now, the establishment (and also some of its critics) were promulgating the most ludicrous conspiracy theories about how the 'barbarian' Russians posed a threat not just to the British Empire, but to the entire Western civilization.

Then as now, it was all a load of hogwash. The warmongers of the day just wanted an excuse for another scrap, one in which like their neocon counterparts today, they would stay safely out of harm's way when the cannon balls were fired. For the financial elites, conflict meant excess profits and a nice return on war loans.

• The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction
• When Antarctica was a rainforest
• Exquisitely preserved, 5 million year old fossil forest uncovered in Japan
• World's oldest forest unlike anything imagined, leaves scientists confused

The reptile was clearly very well adapted to an oceanic lifestyle, as indicated by the flippered limbs and exquisitely preserved fishes in its stomach region. Despite superficial similarities, Dinocephalosaurus was not closely related to the famous long-necked plesiosaurs that only evolved around 40 million years later and which inspired the myth of the Loch Ness Monster. The fossils were discovered in Guizhou Province, southern China.

[...]

The paper describing the animal is published in full in the academic journal Earth and Environmental Science: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh - forming the entirety of the latest volume.

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• 3rd Century CE Hirota civilisation were first peoples of Japan to practise cranial deformation
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'a palm-shaped amulet popular throughout North Africa and in the Middle East and commonly used in jewellery and wall hangings.^[5][6] Depicting the open hand, an image recognized and used as a sign of protection in many times throughout history, the hamsa has been traditionally believed to provide defense against the evil eye.

© CarlesVAA hanging hamsa in Tunisia

[...]

Early use of the hamsa could be traced to ancient Mesopotamian artifacts in the amulets of the goddess Inanna or Ishtar.

[...] An 8th-century BCE Israelite tomb containing a hamsa-like hand inscription was discovered at Khirbet el-Qom.^[6]

Going back to the Middle East, the Mesopotamians paid very special attention to Innana/Ishtar (Venus). It was one of the most venerated deities in the Sumerian pantheon, the most important and widely venerated deity in the Assyrian pantheon.

[...]

Not only was Venus described as a comet by numerous ancient mythologies, but it was considered a destructive one, as depicted in the prayer of lamentation to Ishtar: [...]

© via University of MaineAbove: Comets (‘Huìxīng’) have been observed and recorded in China since the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC). The set of comet illustrations from a silk book (‘Bóshū’) written during the western Han period

Association between comets and plagues

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• Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls
• 17,000 years ago one of Europe's most ancient domestic dogs lived in the Basque Country