We all know that the humans, urged by their bellies, at first, foraged and hunted and moved about and sheltered themselves in any cave they could find.

They did not have a home. The whole world was their home.

When did they build their first homes? And if you dwelt at one place instead of moving about searching for food, you will have to be able to satisfy your most basic need–feed your belly–at or around your dwelling place.

The Chinese character for “home” explains when and how they did this in a vivid way. This is how they scratched on a bone(they did not have paper yet at that time) to mean the word “home”:

If that’s not obvious enough, how about this one?–after thousands of years, it evolved into a more picturesque way:

But, I hear you asking, what does pig have anything to do with it?

Well, how do you think it’s possible for them to settle instead of chasing after animals for food?

Keep the animal, keep the food, at or around your dwelling place.

Pig still is the most common household animal in China, and pork the most common meat: history is not very far away.

Till this day, in villages where the industry lifestyle still has not eliminated all the ways of traditional living, there are still households keeping pigs in their yards for the feast of the New Year or, for that matter, any feast.

With time, it evolved into this one which the ancient Chinese used for a very long time:

And this character 家jia1, eventually becomes this one which we use today:

It’s not very romantic, is it? But how practical it is!