Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

It is safe to say that everyone who is reading this blog has heard about, thought about and/or perhaps formed their own theories about this question. If one analyzed this question from an evolutionary stand point, as most of my fellow AP peers will probably do, you will find that the egg seems to have come first. Evolution, as supported by Neil Shubin in Your Inner Fish, is the foundation of biology. Life’s main goal is to procreate itself, suiting the next generation with more efficient genes. Evidence supporting this lies in the Theory of Natural Selection. Darwin stated, and this is not verbatim, that because of the existence of natural variation within a species the environment chooses the organisms with the better traits to survive and reproduce. Now, this brief background on evolution was intended to explain why many biologists believe the egg came first; evolution occurs not in a specific organism, but to the species as a whole. More specifically it occurs in the embryo that proceeds the next generation. Therefore, according to this theory the egg must have come first because the animal that preceded the chicken laid an “evolutionary egg” which hatched into a chicken (I’m
using the term “evolutionary egg” to describe the egg that came after a non-chicken organism). The evolutionary theory’s chronology is: non-chicken organism -> evolutionary egg -> chicken. Because the evolutionary egg formed a chicken from a non-chicken parent, then it must have come first, right? Recent evidence supports the contrary. I personally have thought about this question a great deal and prior to entering AP Biology this year I hypothesized that the chicken actually came first. I concluded that if the egg came first then how exactly would it have survived without the aid of a parent figure. If we take a step back and look at the world around us, we will notice that animals, mostly mammals, rear their offspring. This is not simply to protect the fragile offspring, it is also necessary to ensure that the offspring develop knowledge on how to behave like their species. The parents teach the offspring through her actions, how to survive and live efficiently. Therefore in order for the egg to survive, it must need a parent figure to watch over it and nurture it; an egg that is not kept warm will not survive and hatch into a chicken. I believe that the chicken must have come first because the egg needed a role model to learn from. The chicken will always produce an egg, which needs the warm of the parent to survive and form another chicken. If the first chicken is taken out of the equation, then there will be an egg with no proceeding chicken to nurture it. This would result in the death of the egg and the opposite of what life is intended for. Now this may be a bit confusing, however keep in mind that if the egg came first it must have been able to survive on its own. This couldn’t have worked. Scientists in Britain have concluded that the chicken indeed came first. They discovered that a crucial protein needed to synthesize the shell of the egg was found in the chicken and not the egg. Simply put, the egg could not have been formed without the DNA of a proceeding chicken. This topic I know is very controversial and my explanation may be insufficient to some. What are your thoughts?

Useful Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38238685/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/which-came-first-chicken-or-egg/