--- title: Chicken or Egg: Which Came First? description: It has thousands of years of history, going all the way back to Ancient Greece, but even now the answer depends on whom you ask. canonical: https://time.com/4475048/which-came-first-chicken-egg/ author: Merrill Fabry article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-09-21T14:00:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:11.579Z article:section: History og:title: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? og:description: The famous question has thousands of years of history behind it og:url: https://time.com/4475048/which-came-first-chicken-egg/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta51286b159078261/6988a6d6e20a874fc5a927de/chicken-egg-now-you-know.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1430 og:image:height: 804 og:image:alt: Now You Know Chicken og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? twitter:description: The famous question has thousands of years of history behind it twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta51286b159078261/6988a6d6e20a874fc5a927de/chicken-egg-now-you-know.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Now You Know: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=f4159cdc-1bf8-4f35-8262-78a9cfd01f7b&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=f4159cdc-1bf8-4f35-8262-78a9cfd01f7b&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Chickens Come Home to Roost [Watch (HLS stream): Chickens Come Home to Roost](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Blt9nsZS.m3u8) (2:29)  _Published 2016-02-12. For Lisa Burkhardt investing in a small chicken farm was the best decision she's ever made._  by [Merrill Fabry](https://time.com/author/merrill-fabry/)  ## Merrill Fabry Sep 21, 2016 2:00 PM UTC  Chicken and egg. Chicken and egg. Nina Leen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  by [Merrill Fabry](https://time.com/author/merrill-fabry/)  ## Merrill Fabry Sep 21, 2016 2:00 PM UTC _Do you have a question about history? Send us your question at history@time . com and you might find your answer in a future edition of Now You Know._ First of all, yes, a reader really did ask us this one. At first we laughed a bit—who wouldn’t? But it turns out that this question is a classic for a reason. People have been asking it for thousands of years, and it contains more than a little history. “It’s a charming problem because you want to dismiss it as a stupid question,” says Roy Sorensen, a [philosopher](https://pages.wustl.edu/sorensen) at Washington University in St. Louis who has written on the question, “but you can see on reflection that we’re impatient with it, but it’s not a stupid question.” First, let’s get the scientific answer out of the way. Eggs, generally speaking, existed before chickens did. The [oldest](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/pictures/120124-oldest-dinosaur-nests-eggs-embryos-south-africa-science/) fossils of dinosaur eggs and embryos are [about](http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-dinosaur-embryo-fossils-discovered-in-china-1.12779) 190 million years old. Archaeopteryx [fossils](https://www.britannica.com/animal/Archaeopteryx), which are the oldest generally accepted as birds, are around 150 million years old, which means that [birds](https://www.britannica.com/animal/bird-animal/Muscles-and-organs) in general came after eggs in general. That answer is also true—[the egg comes first](http://time.com/3418718/which-came-first-the-egg/)—when you narrow it down to chickens and the specific eggs from which they emerge. At some point, some almost-chicken creature produced an egg containing a bird whose genetic makeup, due to some small mutation, was fully chicken. Given the incremental nature of genetic changes, locating that precise dividing line is pretty much impossible, but chickens were domesticated, [diverging](https://www.britannica.com/animal/chicken) from their wild counterparts, sometime in the range of 7,000 years ago. Neil deGrasse Tyson has [endorsed](https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/296100559423954944) this idea of the not-quite-a-chicken bird laying the egg which would grow up to be a chicken, and Bill Nye [agreed](https://twitter.com/BillNye/status/296120258136248320). A few years ago a group of scientists did [write](http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/07/14/england.chicken.egg.riddle/) about how a particular protein required for chicken egg shell formation was only found in chicken ovaries. That data was often reported as evidence that [the chicken was first](http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/07/14/the-chicken-and-the-egg-ancient-mystery-solved/), but even the scientists whose study it was weren’t too [convinced,](http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/researchers%5Fapply%5Fcomputing/) with one of them calling the question “fun but pointless.” (When the [Oxford English Dictionary](http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/10/chicken-or-egg/) gave it a go, exploring which word has a longer history, that method that yielded no definite answer.) Perhaps the more interesting angle, then, is where the question originated—and what its answer’s evolution (no pun intended) reveals about the history of human thought. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) The story starts in Ancient Greece. Aristotle was clearly thinking about this type of question, says Sorensen, though he escaped having to answer it by saying that both went infinitely backward and had always existed. An 1825 English translation of François Fénelon’s book on ancient philosophers [described](https://books.google.com/books?id=tNkGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA202#v=onepage&q&f=false) Aristotle’s perspective: “There could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there would have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg.” It was Plutarch who gave the question its enduring form, “Whether the Hen or the Egg Came first,” writing of the [“little question”](https://books.google.com/books?id=w3FHAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=plutarch+bird+egg+world+beginning&source=bl&ots=8sKxdS646J&sig=z%5FkXffER5fXlrKzbA6HU5Mx7eVg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5gsqUlp7PAhUEJiYKHXTQB2QQ6AEIKTAD#v=onepage&q=plutarch%20bird%20egg%20world%20beginning&f=false) that it “shook the great and weighty problem (whether the world had a beginning).” In the fifth century, one Roman scholar, Macrobius, [wrote that](https://books.google.com/books?id=dVtZrdAWOCUC&pg=PT181&lpg=PT181&dq=jest+about+what+you+supposed+to+be+a+triviality,+in+asking+whether+the+hen+came+first+from+the+egg+or+the+egg+from+the+hen,&source=bl&ots=XmUJGSGbe%5F&sig=aL4xTCG9c60AmxK146nPzhH8LEg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiW-PicqpLPAhVJdj4KHdwcBm8Q6AEIJjAB#v=onepage&q=jest%20about%20what%20you%20supposed%20to%20be%20a%20triviality%2C%20in%20asking%20whether%20the%20hen%20came%20first%20from%20the%20egg%20or%20the%20egg%20from%20the%20hen%2C&f=false) people “jest about what you suppose to be a triviality, in asking whether the hen came first from the egg or the egg from the hen, but the point should be regarded as one of importance.” Christian philosophers like Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas spent time considering how to square Greek philosophers’ wonder and sage thinking with the certainty of their religious worldview, says Sorensen. After all, understanding the question based strictly on Genesis, the chicken would come first. A few hundred years later, the Italian natural [historian](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ulisse-Aldrovandi) Ulysse [Aldrovandi](https://books.google.com/books?id=n064AAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=hen+existed+first) wrote briefly on the matter, [revealing](https://books.google.com/books?id=4Gr4DAAAQBAJ&pg=PT81&lpg=PT81&dq=aldrovandus+egg+hen+first&source=bl&ots=Qll0jOukAS&sig=wbk0LsA2OjVijLnbUOxrHsOYFY4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjby-e7m5LPAhVLNz4KHRatDMgQ6AEINTAH#v=onepage&q=aldrovandus%20egg%20hen%20first&f=false) that the question was well-known but settled in the year 1600: “I pass over now that trite and thus otiose rather than curious question, whether the hen exists before the egg or vice versa. It is stated in the sacred books that the hen existed first. These books teach that animals were created at the beginning of the world; hence the hen did not come from the egg but from nothing.” By the 18th century, however, things were changing. Denis Diderot, an important enlightenment [thinker](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Denis-Diderot) and editor of the _Encyclopédie_, did not see the question as quite so simple. “If the question of the priority of the egg over the chicken or of the chicken over the egg embarrasses you, it is because you suppose that animals originally were what they are at present,” [he wrote](https://books.google.com/books?id=WzY%5FkGjRCXkC&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=priority+of+the+egg+or+the+chicken+or+of+the+chicken+or+the+egg+embarrasses+you&source=bl&ots=VZ%5FESku52N&sig=JxCSskr1sm1tLkuHO5DIU54F0YQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHsOyntY3PAhXCPj4KHbg8C-4Q6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=priority%20of%20the%20egg%20or%20the%20chicken%20or%20of%20the%20chicken%20or%20the%20egg%20embarrasses%20you&f=false) in 1769\. “What folly!” To Diderot, an animal’s past was as [uncertain](https://books.google.com/books?id=8XgcMLBQlWUC&pg=PT179&lpg=PT179&dq=Conversation+between+D%27Alembert+and+Diderot&source=bl&ots=Ur9PxITZVK&sig=LpTSOwTCgoNn-5QnokksvaqcZdM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibiMj3t43PAhXF6CYKHenHD3wQ6AEIWzAL#v=onepage&q=bothered&f=false) as its future. Charles Darwin’s _On the Origin of Species_ complicated the issue upon its publication in 1859, Sorensen notes. The theory of evolution made it clear that in some ways Diderot was looking in the right direction, but its emphasis on gradual change (and Gregor Mendel’s principles of genetic inheritance) produced the combination of certainty and mystery that continues to this day: the egg must have come first, but it can’t be said when. It’s a struggle to distinguish between one species and another given that there’s a lot of overlap as species slowly adapt. Even as the science is pretty much resolved, philosophers continue to engage with the matter. Clearly, the question remains a fruitful starting-point for all sorts of meditations—including this one. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] I owe some of my favorite childhood memories to chickens. Every summer my brother and I traveled from our home near Miami to the Ohio town where my aunt and uncle owned a chicken farm. In the mornings we'd gather the eggs and then we'd sell them at a roadside stand. Pure bliss for a girl from the burbs. So it was no surprise Years later, I told my husband that I longed to leave the suburbs and move a few miles further out to the Kentucky countryside so we'd have space for a mini chicken farm. I wanted our kids, then ages 13, 11, 8, and 2, to appreciate life's simpler pleasures too, so off we went. The kids and I wasted no time Time pouring over a hatchery catalogue. Yes, there are such things. We wanted to make sure we got eggs, so we ordered 15 chicks of a prolific breed called Barred Rock. At only $ 2. 85 each, I wondered if they'd keep up their end of the bargain. We spent about $ 70 for a scrap lumber coop and six weeks worth of feed. But the big investment was time. The chickens were a lot of work, especially for the kids. Cleaning out the straw bedding, replacing the water and food, and keeping away the roaming raccoons at night. We let the girls free range during the day and the kids marveled that the bird knew When it was time to hit the hay, literally. In most months, our beloved hens produced about $ 32 worth of farm fresh eggs. People were delighted to pay two bucks for a dozen. That barely covered the hens' room and board, not to mention the cost of the fancier breeds the kids wanted. Columbian Wyandotte Buff Orpingtons, Araucanas, and the delightful Top Hats, with the flourisher feathers perched high on their heads. In the 13 years we've had chickens, we've probably spent a few hundred dollars more than they've earned, yet the chickens would make me happy, even if they never earned a dime. From my kitchen window, I watch them scratch for bugs and take their [ UNKNOWN ] [ INAUDIBLE ] They seem so content. And we still get eggs, beautiful brown ones. Lovely blue and green ones. And our little top hat named Lulubell lays the tiniest white ones. I have heard of cat ladies. Are there chicken ladies? If so, I am one. 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