“山”是一个象形字。甲骨文中的“山”字就像一片连绵起伏的群山。金文中的“山”字有了高峰。小篆中，“山”字中间部分像个“人”。隶书中的“山”字和楷书的“山”字有些相近。最后两个分别是草书和行书中“山”字。

“山” (shān, hill) is a pictographic character, which describes with clean cut strokes according to the characteristics of things. In the ancient time, people used to live in the places where hill joined with the plains. There were many high mountains surrounding them.
In the oracle bones（甲骨文, jiǎgǔwén, 1) the hills are generally of the same height, while in the bronze inscri-ptions (金文，jīwén, 2), the middle one is the highest. That’s what they drew in the very beginning. You see there are three high and two low points. The high points stand for the peaks of the mountains while the 2 low ones mean the feet of the hill.When it developed into the lesser scri-pt (小篆, xiǎozhuàn, 3), as you can see in picture 3 the middle one seems to be “人（rén, a person)”. In fact it also stands for a hill. While in the clerical style (隶书，lìshū, 4) it is more square and upright.
 “隶” in the ancient Chinese means a person who was engaged in writing and he wrote quite fast. Therefore the characters that he wrote were pithy and vigorous. (edited by Zhao Pingping)

词汇扩展：
1. 山     shān  mountain, hill
2. 山顶 shāndǐng, top of a mountain
3. 山歌 shāngē  folk song
4. 山谷 shāngǔ  mountian valley
5. 山坡 shānpō  hillside
6. 山头 shāntóu  hilltop
山崖shānyá  cliff