The Great Chicken or Egg Debate Continues: The Case For the Egg

Which came first? It had to be the egg.

That would be any child’s answer, for they know some important principles of Natural History; those same ideas that gave them the assurance to make such a firm statement.

How do they know it? Well, there’s a simple explanation: it’s Dinosaurs.

In Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, we were presented with computerized images, especially those of the popular Velociraptors, depicting a dinosaur feature which is well described in Michael Crighton’s book: dinosaurs moving like birds. Like chicken!

Nevertheless, do not get me wrong. Dinosaurs were not chicken. They were literally ages from being a “near-chicken”. And still, as most evolutionary biologists and paleontologists believe, dinosaurs were the ancestors of modern birds (or birds are actually modern dinosaurs). The evidence is no longer just the famous Bavarian fossil of the Archaeopteryx, unearthed in 1861. Several other fossils recently found in China suggest an evolutionary line between some theropod dinosaurs and modern birds. The former, best represented by the “Raptors”, shared some unique features with the latter: sternum and furcula (breastbone and wishbone), hollow bones, swiveling wrists, three fingers, backward pubic bone, bipedal bone and muscle structure, three forward pointing toes and a hallux (back toe) and finally, and most important for our discussion: they laid eggs! A fossil of the feather covered Sinosauropteryx, that lived more than 120 million years before chicken roamed this planet, shows a pair of oval mounds inside its rib cage!

“An egg is an egg is an egg is an egg”

Dinosaur eggs have been known since the thirties, when petrified eggs were found together with adult dinosaur fossils in Gobi, Central Asia. Recent discoveries in Argentina have allowed scientists to actually look at a dinosaur embryo, and notice how those eggs functioned exactly as eggs do today: a thin shell that permits an exchange of gases through its pores, miraculously transforming yolk and albumen into a complete creature.

Too speculative? As Averroes would say, the knowledge of such a process would “increase one’s faith in the omnipotence and oneness of God Almighty”.

Now, if I want to be philosophical and look to the Bible to prove my point, I may dare to “interpret” the book of Genesis under a Thomistic point of view. In this case, I would still insist on my reasoning above, trying to demonstrate the order of nature and physical changes as designed by God. It does apply; guiltlessly.

Or else, a purely Aristotelian analysis of change would perfectly justify the chicken coming from an egg laid by a “near chicken”, for it could not have come from an egg laid by itself. It would not matter, though, for she still came from an egg!

However, I am far from knowing everything about chicken, or worthy of quoting Ibn Rushd, or the Doctor of Aquinas, or the Macedonian Philosopher. Now, if I literally look at the Bible, I surrender to the first chapter of Genesis. If chickens were included among “every kind of winged creature”, this is it: I loose!

Yet, as I understand, there were no chickens in biblical lands in those times. There were eggs though, as they are mentioned as early as in the Book of Job (the taste of the egg white). Unspecific references to “herds and flocks” are quite common in the initial books of the Old Testament. There are some allusions to certain types of birds, as ravens, doves, quails, pigeons, birds of prey, water fowl, peacocks and the hoopoe. But where are the chickens? If we are to be strictly biblical and only look at what’s in the scriptures, we have seen it: there’s no chicken there. And believe me: all of these birds mentioned above did lay eggs.

The first allusions to chickens (hens protecting their chicks and the cock that crowed) are in the New Testament, which is, chronologically, about a millennium after the Book of Job. Personally, I believe that chicken probably arrived in the middle east during Alexander times. As we all (in the business) know, chicken came from Asia. The oldest chicken fossils in human dwellings date from about 5,000 years ago, in China.

So, what do the Chinese say about it?

Ancient traditions in China recount the story of the Creation: “P’an-ku was the first living being.  P’an-ku created everything while keeping heaven and earth separate. Heaven and earth were two antagonistic forces. They were Yin and Yang. P’an-ku separated Yin and Yang, for these two forces had been kept together inside an egg. And this egg was the beginning.”