Here's the thing. Before Chickens were Chickens, they were Red Junglefowl. Possibly hybridized with Grey Junglefowl. Chickens and Junglefowl are extremely similar and can interbreed. So, perhaps it can be argued that the first Chicken was merely a newly domesticated Junglefowl which was bestowed with a new name?
In which case, that Chicken would have preceded the first Chicken egg.
Now that I think about it more, I may have to agree with
DJ and
Levi that it all boils down to semantics. A duck is a duck is a duck. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's a duck. So if it looks like a chicken and clucks like a chicken... (But then, by that reasoning, wouldn't the modern Red and Grey Junglefowl also be classified as just alternate names for varieties of "chicken"?)
On the other hand, I'm thinking DeKaFu may have a point in that a Junglefowl may have become the first chicken by being domesticated. But I
may be saying that for a reason which DeKaFu did not consider.
Scientists theorize that the domesticated dog originated several thousands of years ago (about the time of the last Ice Age) from wild canines (wolves or similar) which fed on refuse left by humans. Being wild, they had a natural fear and mistrust of humans and that included a fear of the smell of humans. But some of them could overcome their fear enough to dig through the human refuse piles and eat. Eventually, humans approached these wild dogs and started to interact with and domesticate them.
But the surprising thing is that scientists claim this change from wolf to domestic dog occurred very,
very rapidly - merely a few generations.
How is that possible, you may ask? After all, a change in genetics that results in a new species requires millions of years, does it not?
Well... recently, scientists uncovered another mechanism by which a species can change drastically in a mere generation or two. It's called "
epigenetics" and it has to do with how, under certain environmental or stress factors, the
expression of certain genes are turned on or off like a light switch. Another words, parts of actively used DNA make become dormant and parts which may ordinarily be dormant become expressed (used).
I remember hearing about some experiments by a Russian scientist in the breeding of foxes in captivity. The surprising thing is that in just a few generations the foxes started to resemble common dogs. They had variations in fur color and floppy ears. They even barked like dogs! The theory is that selectively breeding the animals with less adrenaline and other stress factors changes gene expression through
epigenetics.
So... I'm thinking that the mere act of domesticating the Junglefowl may have caused some
physical changes in the immediate offspring via
epigenetics - even though these "chickens" shared identical DNA with Junglefowl. If that's the case, the physical differences that separate Junglefowl from Chickens may have been
noticeable in even
one newly hatched clutch of Junglefowl eggs. Of course, that's just a theory...