0075 年

年

This character means ‘year,’ pronounced NEN or toshi in Japanese and nián in Chinese.

Sources agree that it represents a man carrying home the year-end harvest, as represented by the character for grain-on-the-stalk (left, below) or rice (right, below):

禾   米.

By extension, then, the year-end harvest came to represent ‘year,’

The man and grain can be seen, sort of, in the archaic characters,

 .

I can make out the grain on top, and I assume that the thing something like a question mark on the bottom is the man. It looks a lot like

子,

which now means ‘child.’ It’s hard to see why that symbol would mean ‘man.’ Wieger says that 子 is a baby with two hands swathed up, and thus the single ‘leg.’ However, it also meant ‘sage, teacher,’ because, as an honor, the ancient Emperors called such wise men ‘sons.’ So maybe the people carrying the grain are ‘children of the sacred grain,’ or something like that; that’s merely my speculation. Seeing the grain and the man in the modern character are difficult, though.