Chiｃken and egg

どっちが先に決まるべきなのか、それが問題だ。

打ち合わせの相手が言った。
この間、出張に行った中国で、古い諺だと言うことで。
今日は、電話会議で、マイナス15度にもなっているというロシアから。
諺は世界共通だ。なんてすばらしい。地球が狭く感じた。

The dilemma of causality commonly posed as, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is found earliest in writing in Plutarch's Moralia, in the books titled "Table Talk," a series of arguments based on questions posed to various people drinking around a table. Under the section entitled, "Whether the hen or the egg came first," the discussion is introduced in such a way as to suggest that the origin of the dilemma was even older:

"...the problem about the egg and the hen, which of them came first, was dragged into our talk, a difficult problem which gives investigators much trouble. And Sulla my comrade said that with a small problem, as with a tool, we were rocking loose a great and heavy one, that of the creation of the world..."

When used in reference to difficult problems, a chicken and egg problem is similar to a Catch 22 situation where something cannot happen until a second thing does, and the second thing cannot happen until the first does. For example, you cannot find a job without work experience, but you cannot get work experience without first having a job.

There are many different answers to the question, many themselves humorous.