Bear skeleton sheds light on 2,800-year-old Chinese ritual

A bear skeleton unearthed in central China's Henan province may reveal that Chinese people tamed bears at least 2,800 years ago, said archaeologists.

The skeleton was discovered at a cultural relic site in Taohe, a town in Nanyang, by archaeologists from the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. The team was called in to perform a rescue excavation when relics were discovered at the construction site of China's south-to-north water diversion project.

Archaeologists estimate that the relic where the bear was buried was a sacrificial pit from the late period of the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century to 771 BC).