The question is actually answerable if you specify whether you mean a
generic egg or a chicken egg. If you just mean an egg then obviously the
egg came first because there were eggs around a lot earlier than
chickens. If you mean chicken egg then you have to determine when the
chicken ancestor became a chicken. I would apply the so-called
mitochondrial eve concept to chickens. To sum up the mitochondrial eve
concept it is that as generations go by the genetic makeup of each
sexually reproducing species member is one half of each of its parents.
That is, of course, nuclear DNA that we are talking about. However, the
DNA of organelles is not transmitted sexually. The mitochondrial DNA is
the easiest to study and the mitochondrial DNA is inherited completely
from the mother because the sperm only contributes nuclear DNA. By
assuming that the mitochondrial DNA mutates at a steady rate we can
compare different populations to each other and determine when they last
had a common ancestor. This has been used to determine ancient
migrations of human populations and it has been used to determine that
every human being alive descended from a single female ancestor who
lived in Africa between 150 and 200 thousand years ago. She is called
the mitochondrial eve. Now, back to chickens. There is bound to be some
single female ancestor to all living chickens that existed at some time
in the past too. She was certainly a member of a large and interbreeding
population that would have been called a species, but at some point in
time she laid an egg that engendered all future chickens. She had her
own genome and her mate had his own genome, but when that egg was
fertilized it contained the genome that would give rise to all future
chickens. Therefore, that was the first chicken egg. It hatched into the
first chicken and all subsequent progeny of that chicken were then
chickens. So the chicken egg came before the chicken.
On 8/1/2018 9:35 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Dear Richard, Mostafa and All the Saints and Sinners,
As a small boy just old enough to be indoctrinated into the Queen Anne
Baptist Sunday School, my bright eyed young teacher looked us over and
asked, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
It turned out to be a trick question. We mumbled around a little bit,
some thinking a chicken would need to be first in order to lay the
egg, and others thinking an egg would need to hatch in order to
produce the first chicken.
Finally, maybe after about one minute, the teacher clapped her hands
and with a laugh she announced, "It doesn't matter. God came first,
and He decided between the chicken or the egg. We don't need to
know." And so began my trip into Never Never Land. Never think, and
Never ask.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/31/18, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Alas and alack,
Sound and Fury
Who came first?
That’s the fact that we lack!
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 31, 2018, at 1:14 PM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The
