That's because you're seeing them after literally thousands of years of evolution and simplification. 马, for example, is the simplified form of 馬, which is tra

That's because you're seeing them after literally thousands of years of evolution and simplification. 马, for example, is the simplified form of 馬, which is traceable back through the millenia to a pretty recognizable picture of a horse back around 1300 BCE or so. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC#Etymology) Same with 女, which originally was a drawing of a stick-figure woman with breasts. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B3#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B3#Etymology)