The chicken or the egg

The question Which came first? - The chicken or the egg? is one of the most debated arguments of all time.

A chicken and egg problem is a dilemma or a deadlock situation where one cannot provide either item because one lacks the other. For example, you cannot find a job without work experience, but you cannot get work experience without first having a job.


As with most problems, it is important to try to understand the question and a good place to start is by asking what is meant by 'the egg':


Common viewpoint

The egg is assumed to be a chicken egg. This is a very obvious assumption given that the question implies that there is a link between the two.


If we assume that the egg is a chicken-egg then we have to define what is meant by a chicken-egg:

  • A chicken will hatch from a chicken egg

i.e. An animal that was not a chicken laid the chicken-egg which contained the first ever chicken. In this case the egg came first.

  • A chicken egg is the egg that a chicken lays

i.e. A chicken (that already existed) laid an egg (a chicken-egg). In this case the chicken came first.

Another viewpoint

The egg is not assumed to be a chicken egg. In effect this changes the question to: "Which came first a chicken or an egg".

From a purely scientific point of view this question can be answered quite easily. It is difficult to decide when the egg began as any cell is sometimes called an egg. Let's call the egg the hard shell one, and the chicken the first feather covered animal.

Evolutionary scientists beleive the first hard shell egg was the amniotic egg laid around 200 million years ago, and was laid by the animal who was the link between reptiles and amphibians. It was only after this egg that animals could breed away from the sea. Birds would emerge 50 million years after descending from theropod dinosaurs. The first dinosaur with feathers was the Archaeopteryx.

In this case, the first chicken must have been the mutant offspring of a proto-chicken that laid the first chicken's surrounding egg. That is, unless one defines a chicken egg as an egg which has been laid by a chicken.

See also:


other game theory related


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