High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Bear worship (also known as the bear cult or arctolatry) is the religious practice of the worshiping of bears found in many North American and North Eurasian ethnic circumpolar religions such as the Sami, Nivkh, Ainu, and pre-Christian Finns. There are also a number of deities from Celtic Gaul and Britain associated with the bear and the bear is featured on many totems throughout northern cultures that carve them. Bear worship may have been practiced as far back as the Middle paleolithic period amongst Neanderthal societies.