人类
rénlèi · HSK 3
human being
👥 人类 = 人 (person) + 类 (kind/category) — 'humankind'
人 is the classic pictograph of a walking person; 类 means class or category. Together they literally read as 'person-kind', the Chinese word for humanity or the human species.
人 — pictograph of a standing person
人 is a pictograph showing a person viewed from the side, with two strokes representing the legs and torso of a standing human. In oracle bone script it clearly depicted a figure leaning slightly forward. The meaning has remained 'person' or 'human' throughout its history.
类 — rice 米 + big 大 + dog 犬
类 (traditional 類) originally combined 米 (rice/grains) with 犬 (dog), suggesting things grouped by similarity, possibly from sorting grains or comparing dogs of a kind. Over time it came to mean 'kind, type, category.' The simplified form keeps 米 over 大, dropping the dog.