Which came first - the chicken or the egg?

While excavating a site in the Middle-East, an archaeologist came upon two perfectly preserved bodies. "I've found Adam and Eve," he exclaimed.

How did he know, and what is the relevance to this story?

The chicken and egg question is one of those imponderables to which there is no real answer. A chicken can only be born from a fertilised egg laid by an adult hen. So the egg precedes the chicken, and the chicken precedes the egg.

But where did the first chicken come from? Was it created in the Garden of Eden or was the egg created first? Or was it the result of some long-winded series of mutations in a never-ending evolutionary process?

Of course, taking the evolutionary view still does not give a definitive answer. Sure the chicken probably emerged from another more primitive form of bird. One that didn't taste as good. And before that from a fish or a reptile, none of which helps to answer the question. Perhaps the first chicken emerged from an egg of a chicken-like bird or a pre-chicken, but evolution is not that simple. Was there a single point in time when someone can say with any degree of certainty that the first chicken had been born. If that is the case then it follows that the egg came first.

Of course this debate could carry on indefinitely. Was this the first chicken - or was it a pre-chicken? Where exactly can we draw the line? And isn't a pre-chicken really a chicken and who really cares, anyway?

All of which leads is to the main problem of the theory of evolution. How did life start? In the entire history of the world as we know it life has never emerged from anything but life. Even if all life originated as an amoeba, where did the first amoeba come from? With all the science in the world, man has been unable to produce life. We are able to manipulate genes, breed selectively and with a little ingenuity perhaps produce a new species. But we are unable to produce life. Not only are we unable to produce life, but life have never been observed to have emerged of its own accord.

If you haven't figured out the archaeologist's certainty about Adam and Eve, the answer is that they had no navels. As they were not born in the conventional way, there was no need for an umbilical cord. Perhaps the first chicken came readymade and the egg came later?