ZHENGZHOU Authentic Anton Stralman Jersey , Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- 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 Town in Nanyang City by archaeologists from Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (HPICA). 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 beast was buried was a sacrificial pit from the late period of the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century to 771 B.C.).

"We don't know yet when Chinese began to tame bears, but from the discovery of the skeleton we can at least infer that they had the practice during the late Western Zhou Dynasty," said Ma Xiaolin, archaeologist with HPICA.

After digging up and analyzing the bones, scientists speculated that the bear was tamed by ancient Chinese to be an offering to ancestors.

Judging from the shape of the beast's teeth and skull, it was a black bear, said Hou Yanfeng, another archaeologist with HPICA. It was male, based on the large sagittal crest on its skull, he added.

From examining its lower teeth, scientists believe that it died in the early spring when it was five years old.

The team also found that the bear's left leg was 29 mm shorter than the right one. "To further investigate the cause of the limp, we had the left leg bone X-rayed and found that the leg had probably suffered from a fracture when the bear was a cub."

But the bear's survival and normal development of other bones suggest that the injury did not cause many adverse effects, such as starvation or danger of becoming prey for other animals.

However, it was probably captured and raised by humans as a result of the injury when it was a cub and less ferocious, and ended up as a sacrifice buried in the pit, archaeologists said.

According to Hou, the sacrificial pit is located at the birthplace of Chu, an ancient Chinese state in today's neighboring provinces of Hubei and Hunan, as well as part of Henan.

"Chu people bore the ancestral name of Xiong, or Bear, so it is very likely that bears were tamed and raised for sacrificial use at that time."

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government is recently struggling hard to justify its criticism of China's defensive moves in the South China Sea, because it is clear that it is the United States, not China, that is the real source of militarization of the region.

China's deployment of a surface-to-air missile system on the Xisha Islands, an inherent part of China's territory, is defensive in nature and falls within its sovereign rights and international law.

In an attempt to increase pressure on China, the U.S. government keeps slinging mud at China, calling the deployment a move to "militarize" the region.

Over the past few days, U.S. State Department spokesmen have been hyping up accusations against China over the missile system deployment, alleging that China's move of "militarization" will lead to further tensions in the region and is "counterproductive" to the peaceful resolution of the maritime disputes there.

Asked to clarify if the recent U.S. action of sending warships and fighter jets into territorial waters of Chinese islands in the South China Sea constituted "militarization" of the region, the spokesmen insisted that the U.S. was doing that to exert the so-called "freedom of navigation" rights.

Obviously, their defenses of the provocative U.S. actions against China are pale and invalid. It is a pure fallacy that Washington thinks one country, which is repeatedly threatened by the U.S. military provocations, should not take any defensive measures to protect its own rights.

Turning a deaf ear to China's calls for honoring its promise not to take sides on the maritime disputes, the U.S. has since last October sent warships and military jets to deliberately violate China's territorial waters in the South China Sea.

Apparently, Washington is once again adopting double standards over the issue.

China is not the first or only party in the disputes which has taken steps to build infrastructure and defense facilities on the islands.

However, while justifying any provocative acts by its ally such as the Philippines, or partner countries, the U.S. always points a finger at China for being the bully or villain.

The deployment of defense facilities on Yongxing Island is China's exercise of sovereignty as granted by international law to sovereign states and has been going on for decades. It is not whatsoever related to "militarization."

Fearing that China's rising power and influence will threaten its hegemony in the Asian-Pacific region, Washington in the past seven years has been pushing forward its "Asian Rebalance" strategy, aiming to contain China economically, diplomatically and militarily.

Most notably, the U.S. prioritizes the military perspective of this strategy by shifting most of its naval power and most advanced equipment to the region, deploying more troops and providing military aid to some claimants to bolster their capabilities to confront China.

Resorting to fear-mongering by preaching the so-called China Threat over the maritime disputes, Washington plots to forge a coalition to encircle China and force the Asian country to dance to its tune. But this is doomed to failure, as China has proven to be a peacemaker instead of a troublemaker in its long history.

China, though, has agreed on the U.S. stance that the maritime disputes in the South China Sea should be resolved peacefully through diplomacy in accordance with international laws.

But Washington needs to be truly impartial on the disputes, and needs to stop defaming China .