Bear

For other meanings, see Bear (disambiguation).

Bears in mythology

There is some evidence for prehistoric bear worship, see Arctic, Arcturus, Great Bear, Berserker, Kalevala. Anthropologists such as Joseph Campbell have regarded this as a common feature in most of the fishing and hunting-tribes. The prehistoric Finns, along with most fenno-ugric peoples, considered the bear as the spirit of one's forefathers. This is why the bear was a greatly respected animal, with several euphemistic names. There has been evidence about early bear worship in China and among the Ainu culture as well.

Related Topics:
Bear worship - Arctic - Arcturus - Great Bear - Berserker - Kalevala - Joseph Campbell - Fishing and hunting - Ainu

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The bear is a national emblem of Russia. Numerous cities around the world have adopted the bear as a symbol, notably the Swiss capital Bern, which takes its name from the German for bear, bär. The bear is also the name-emblem of Berlin. Bears are a common symbol of heraldry. In the arms of the bishopric of Freising (illustration, right) the bear is the dangerous totem animal tamed by Saint Corbinian and made to carry his civilized baggage over the mountains: the allegory of the civilizing influence of Christianity is inescapable. A bear also features prominently in the legend of Saint Romedius, who is also said to have tamed one of these animals and had the same bear carry him from his hermitage in the mountains to the city of Trento.

Related Topics:
National emblem - Russia - Swiss - Bern - German - Berlin - Heraldry - Corbinian - Romedius - Trento

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In addition, the Proto-Indo-European word for bear, *hr̥ktos (ancestral to the Greek arktos, Latin ursus, Welsh arth (c.f. Arthur), Sanskrit ṛkṣa, Hittite hartagga) seems to have been subject to taboo deformation or replacement (as was the word for wolf, wlkwos), resulting in the use of numerous unrelated words with meanings like "brown one" (English bruin) and "honey-eater" (Slavic "medved"). Thus four separate Indo-European language groups do not share the same PIE root. The theory of the bear taboo is taught to almost all beginning students of Indo-European and historical linguistics: the putative original PIE word for bear is itself descriptive, because a cognate word in Sanskrit is "rakshas", meaning "harm, injury" http://www.cloudline.org/LinguisticArchaeology.html.

Related Topics:
Proto-Indo-European - Arthur - Taboo deformation - Wolf

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External links

• Chuck Bigelow, note on PIE roots signifying "bear"
• Spanish bear news regularly-updated news archive on Bears in Spain