The age-old question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” has puzzled people for centuries. While no definitive answer existed for a long time, evolutionary science offers an interesting perspective. According to scientists, eggs evolved millions of years before chickens did. Jules Howard, a zoology reporter and author of Infinite Life, notes that the first egg is closely linked to the origin of life itself.
Eggs have been crucial for the survival of many species, acting as life-supporting capsules that enable genetic diversity. Scientists believe the earliest eggs were very different from the ones we know today, likely laid by sea creatures like jellyfish or worms. It means that eggs appeared long before animals emerged on land, making it clear that the egg came before the chicken.
Dr Ellen Mather, a palaeontologist at Flinders University, supports this view. She explains that, holistically, the answer is eggs, since chickens evolved much later. Chickens are thought to have descended from wild birds that adapted to living near humans, leading to their domestication.
Early researchers believed chickens were domesticated about 10,000 years ago, but newer studies suggest domestication occurred between 1250 BC and 1650 BC in Southeast Asia. It places the age of the chicken at around 3,500 years. However, eggs, particularly hard-shelled ones, date back millions of years to the time of dinosaurs, who laid the first hard-shelled eggs during the Jurassic period.
So, from an evolutionary standpoint, eggs came before chickens. Dr. Mather argues that if we focus on the classic version of the question—whether the chicken or its egg came first—the answer changes. The first true chicken likely hatched from an egg laid by a bird that was not a true chicken, known as the red jungle fowl. Thus, while the egg evolved first, the chicken came before the true ‘chicken egg.
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