On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Egg bater the causality dilemma, see Chicken or the egg.

Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1500 BCE. Chickens and other egg-laying creatures are kept widely throughout the world and mass production of chicken eggs is a global industry. 1 million metric tons of eggs were produced worldwide from a total laying flock of approximately 6.

Bird eggs have been valuable foodstuffs since prehistory, in both hunting societies and more recent cultures where birds were domesticated. In the Middle Ages, eggs were forbidden during Lent because of their richness, although the motivation for forgoing eggs during Lent was not entirely religious. The dried egg industry developed in the nineteenth century, before the rise of the frozen egg industry. In 1878, a company in St. Louis, Missouri started to transform egg yolk and egg white into a light-brown, meal-like substance by using a drying process.