I think that by definition if the universe was at one point a singularity then there is a start to time and space.
This idea goes all the way back to Plato and his Parmenidean-inspired rejection of the Pythagorean notion of the Monad as being at the centre of the universe as the Number One implies certain properties like perfection, unity, etc., and we see none of those properties in our existence. This led Plato to argue that the One existed separately from our reality, which was just an imperfect copy associated with the idea of an indefinite Dyad.
So it wasn't just that the universe was a densely packed packed ball of all the stuff we see today and it somehow spilled out or burst forward, what existed before was a monad, and all the stuff we see including space-time, the elements, and more were created at the time of the Big Bang.
This idea goes all the way back to Plato and his Parmenidean-inspired rejection of the Pythagorean notion of the Monad as being at the centre of the universe as the Number One implies certain properties like perfection, unity, etc., and we see none of those properties in our existence. This led Plato to argue that the One existed separately from our reality, which was just an imperfect copy associated with the idea of an indefinite Dyad.
So it wasn't just that the universe was a densely packed packed ball of all the stuff we see today and it somehow spilled out or burst forward, what existed before was a monad, and all the stuff we see including space-time, the elements, and more were created at the time of the Big Bang.