What came first, the chicken or the egg?

This age-old question was first asked by Aristotle back in the 4th century BCE. Since then, the question has been seen throughout society and has become one of today's most iconic paradoxes. So which one actually came first?

The chicken came first, and then it laid an egg

Life always originates with the first living, breathing being. Therefore, the mother and producer of the egg must have been here first.

God created animals at the beginning of the world

At the beginning of the world, God created animals, not eggs. Eggs were simply one way for those animals to reproduce, but the animals were what God created first.

The egg came first, and then it hatched a chicken

There needs to be an egg to hatch a chicken. Therefore, the egg must have come before the chicken.

There is scientific proof that the egg came first

The chicken is descended from other types of birds, and there is scientific proof to show that the first egg was laid by another bird, which eventually produced what we now know as a chicken.

Neither the chicken nor the egg came first

This question is supposed to be an infinite sequence. There is no definitive answer as to what came first, and that is okay.

There is no true origin of the first chicken or the first egg

Some things simply came to be and are outside of the boundaries of human investigation. The problem of the chicken and the egg is one of those. Without a chicken, there could be no egg, and without an egg, there could be no chicken.

This is a false dichotomy; there was no "first" chicken or egg

Eggs, as we know it today, did not simply come into existence overnight, and neither did the modern chicken. Both of them were the result of centuries of evolution.
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This page was last edited on Wednesday, 14 Oct 2020 at 08:55 UTC