No Lions, No Tigers, But The Bears! Oh, My!

Well, the tale that Albert told me is quite unbelievable. The old bear, who told the tale to Albert, claims to be the descendant of an ancient race of bears who had established their own civilization long before mankind had evolved much beyond their monkeyhood. This original bloodline of bears had their own language, culture, and government. In other words, a kingdom of bears with their own society. 
According to this very old descendant of this great race, they would choose a king every 20 years (or there abouts) based on intelligence, wisdom, heart, and physical strength. Their civilization lasted in peace and harmony for over a thousand years. Until, into this society, greed was born. 
There was a minority faction among the bears, who decided they wanted everything for themselves. They felt no loyalty to their great race. Only to themselves. They wished to control everything, from the food and honey, to all the female bears, and pretty much everything else. Of course, they knew it would not be easy for any of them to become King, because the King was chosen by a council of the oldest and wisest of the bears. So they had to do it by subterfuge (trickery). This group of malcontents chose a very young bear, and secretly began training him to outwardly act the part of the perfect King, while behind this false facade he would be their perfect agent to gain control. And, even though it many years, they did fool the council into chosing their agent as King .
Once they had control they were able to surround themselves with many of the strongest, although not the brightest of bears, through bribery and other unethical means. After that, they did away with the council of the old and wise bears, and made sure they were the ones to select each new King. This went on for over a hundred years, during which time this group of power hungry and nasty bears became fat and rich, while many other bears, not only were forced to work hard for the sake of this very selfish group, but also had trouble finding enough to eat, and in some cases, even being able to have a decent place to live.
But as these things tend to go, the majority of the bears finally became upset enough to attack and overthrow the rule of this small elite group. Unfortunately, this also led to an end of the Geat Bear Civilization. Because this small group of despicable bears had destroyed the innocence, trust, and goodwill that had existed in this peaceful society before they stole control, it was not possible for their civilization to continue as it had. It became every bear for himself. And so, they lost their language, their culture, and of course, their society. 
It is rather a sad tale. One can only wish that mankind (which does include womankind, of course), could learn from this story of an ancient bear civilization, be it true, or not.