My Mom Called

Mom, if you think about it, it's pretty obvious the chicken came first. The question isn't "Which came first, [an animal] or an egg?" What people are trying to decide is "When did the first chicken appear?"

Well, what makes a chicken? What makes any animal—or, more specifically, species—for that matter? If you hadn't been stuck in your condo for the last 25 years playing bridge, you'd know the answer:

Genetics.

DNA.

I.e., a chicken has different DNA from, say, a sparrow … or a dinosaur. See where this is headed? "Chickenness" is in the animal, not in its egg. That's just a container (think back to your last omelette).

So, underneath it all, the question is asking "How the hell do you get a chicken from a parent-animal-that's-not-a-chicken?" Answer: you sneak up on it, in the night, with that bugbear of simplisticons, natural selection.

Mutation!—just as with all new species. We know that, at some point, there was a time when there weren't any chickens. Later, there were some chickens. But at first, there had to be just one (eggs are laid, after all, one at a time).

It was an accident … but it was a chicken.

See, at some point in the past, an animal (which was probably a bird that resembled a chicken, but was at least not what-we-call-a-chicken) laid an egg, which was a normal egg for that parent (i.e., not a chicken egg; call it a dinosaur egg if you like, but it was probably a bird-egg).

Inside the egg? An animal that had undergone enough mutation(s) to hatch as what-we-call-a-chicken.

Because DNA is in the animal, not the egg.

That simple enough for ya? Chicken came first. (And myriad is an adjective, not a noun.)

Pass the salt, will you?