Which came first???
So in the car on the way to school one day my munchkin asked me:
“Dad, you’re a teacher, and you teach your students - but where did you learn?”
I replied that I was a student before, too, when I was younger, and that I learned in primary school just like she is, then college, then university, and that now I knew enough to teach others (my students). I guess I should have seen her next question coming:
“But where did the first teacher learn? Who taught them?”
And there it was, a classic case of which came first, only instead of the usual chicken or egg, it was teacher or student!!!
I explained to her that before schools were a thing, some people would share their knowledge about things with each other. So it was like everyone was kind of a teacher and everyone kind of a student. Then some people got more knowledge and became specialised to share that knowledge and teachers became a thing.
So, let’s switch to the usual version of this conundrum - which came first, the chicken or the egg?
For starters, let’s clarify that we don’t mean internally. That is, we’re not talking about all amniotes - tetrapod vertebrates comprising the reptiles (including dinosaurs and birds) and mammals, because we’re not talking about fertilised eggs being kept inside the mother. So mammals, you’re out. And we also don’t mean anamniotes, which lay their eggs in the water.
Let’s look at some animals that lay eggs. You know, things like birds, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, and turtles.
The first proto-turtles were around in the Late Triassic Period, about 220 million years ago.
The first lizard-like reptile, Hylonomus lyelli, lived about 315 million years ago, during the Late Carboniferous Period.
Whilst the diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene about 66-56 million years ago, the earliest known fossils date from 143-167 million years ago.
Crocodiles first appeared 95 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous.
And birds? Well they appeared about 60 million years ago, during the Early Palaeogene.
Wait, wait, hold up. Birds appeared 60 million years ago... And chickens are birds. And they were domesticated a mere 8,000 years ago. That’s pretty recent!!! But all the animals listed lay eggs, and the animals were around waaay longer than chickens.
So, end of story.
The egg came first.