Quick question, did the history of this character originate from ‘pork’ or ‘pig’ as perhaps that was the most early common form of meat available in ancient China.
I heard the character was a picture of meat strips hanging in a smokehouse, but this could be folk etymology.
To Chris: Yeah, that’s folk etymology. It probably depicts a piece of meat (similar to a steak or pork chop).
To OP: Quick answer: no way to know what kind of meat; probably meat in general, as well as the flesh of one’s body.
Long answer: First, you’re making an unwarranted assumption that it had to be a particular kind of meat, and another unwarranted assumption about which kind of meat was most common. Shang dynasty life was very different from that in today’s world. There were far more medium to large animals present in the environment than people. There may have been as much hunting as husbandry. The Shang raised horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and dogs, and the latter four were often sacrificed (and presumably eaten); but they also (or at least the royalty also) hunted often, and brought home large numbers of animals. So you’d have to look at the late Neolithic to Shang dynasty subsistence patterns before reaching a firm conclusion on which form of meat was actually most common at that time. In reading the inscriptions I think I’ve seen many more inscriptions involving cattle, but that’s not a scientific count. I’ve seen references to penned sheep and cattle, but don’t recall any to penned pigs (the 豕 in 家 is actually just a phonetic, and is a corruption of a different graph anyway).
Second, you have to look at how the character was used in the earliest records, which are on the oracle bones, used for divination for the royal house of Shang, ca. 3300 years ago. A common error is to assume that a character meant then what it means now. But in the oracular inscriptions, the character was in fact used to represent the flesh (of one’s body) and meat (e.g., used in sacrifice). (This is not always the case; e.g., the character 好 was NOT used to represent ‘good’ at that time, and was instead borrowed from some other unknown original meaning, perhaps related to marriage or childbirth, to represent a person’s name.)
Finally, there is simply no way to know which kind of meat it originally meant. The oracle bone graph 
somewhat resembled 夕, and is generally assumed to have represented a slice of meat (the seal form 
is merely a rounded version of the same graph, with an extra line, representing perhaps the marbled fat, bones, or the striations of the meat fiber (or is just a graphic decoration, which happened often and doesn’t necessarily mean anything), and sorta resembles a salmon steak, but the OB could be anything, and looks a lot like a pork chop or a steak); the most parsimonious assumption is that since it looks like a steak and meant meat, it was a pictograph of meat – although I wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility that it was a loan of the graph for moon. It certainly wasn’t a pictograph of ‘pig’, nor did it mean ‘pig’. There’s no reason to think it specifically meant ‘pork’ either. There were other characters for pigs of various kinds, and I’ve not seen any sentences which clearly indicate a meaning of ‘pork’. There are sentences like ‘have rou, (will) sacrifice’, and others like ‘(use) rou (to perform) zu-sacrifice’. Then there are sentences like ‘if sacrifice ten boars, will this be suitable?’ and ‘hunt took fifteen cattle’. I’ve not seen anything combining specific animals then the word rou.
In sum, I would venture that the Neolithic proto-Chinese had a generalized word for meat/flesh, much as modern languages generally do, and that a drawing of a slice of non-specific meat was used to represent it. End of story.
Dragonbones - I have to say, that was an awesome post. I was going to attempt an answer of sorts, but you deprived me of that priveledge. :bravo:
I certainly learnt something new today!
Dai-Yum! DB is fo rizzle de shizzle!
Yup. DB is the man! 
In Taiwan, however, an unqualified rou4 usually does mean pork.
You are all wrong. The character was derived from Housecat’s avatar.
肉
[quote=“Juba”]You are all wrong. The character was derived from Housecat’s avatar.
肉
[/quote]
Yes, I immagine those ancient Chinese scholars were thinking of beerfcake when they decided how to communicate the word, “flesh.” Makes sense to me! 
- I meant to add that Juba has a great eye. I’m certain never to forget that character now!
Is that why they call it “six-pack abs”? (Is that the same as a “beer belly”?)
Is that why they call it “six-pack abs”? (Is that the same as a “beer belly”?)[/quote]
Oops! That’s funny.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]
In sum, I would venture that the Neolithic proto-Chinese had a generalized word for meat/flesh, much as modern languages generally do, and that a drawing of a slice of non-specific meat was used to represent it. End of story.[/quote]
How did we get from 夕 to 肉?
Is that why they call it “six-pack abs”? (Is that the same as a “beer belly”?)[/quote]
Oops! That’s funny.[/quote]
Can be.
HG
Very minor graphic evolution – a couple small steps, really. Take the 1st two pics below, both oracle bones, turn it a bit more, and you get 同 minus the box; 90-degree rotation of a character was VERY common in the early stages. Bend the inner stroke into a ^ chevron, and it’s still recognizably the same graph. Bending of strokes was common. Then reduplicate that stroke (or vice versa), and you have the Eastern Zhou1 dynasty to Qin2 dynasty seal form (3rd pic) from the state of Qin2, which is essentially identical to the modern graph (just needs a bit of squaring off in clerical script, as pics 5 & 6 show). Pic 6 is a mature (late Han) clerical variant which didn’t take.
Thanks, I think that answers my question lol. 
Why Rou originally meant chicken:
It’s flesh like fleisch. I don’t think the German has any connotation, anyone confirm?