29 November 2023 - infirm firmament

The chicken or the egg? Well, eggs have been around for hundreds of millions of years, so perhaps you meant a different question? But seriously, in the presence of gene recombination--which happens every generation even without viruses--there is no way to pick out a first chicken or first chicken egg, any more than there is to point to Adam and Eve. Our myths may seem as fundamental as the fundament, but they are no more firm than the firmament.