AN EXISTENTIAL QUANTUM SPECULATION

If it is true that one cannot “have” a gluon in pure isolation without a quark, and a quark cannot exist in pure isolation from a gluon, nor from other (or another) “balancing” quark(s) conjoined by a gluon.
If the factual conceptualization of the quark and the strong nuclear binding force component (the gluon) is true, quarks are “real sub-particle components”, always joined by at least one other quark; while gluons in and of themselves are only an exceedingly strong theoretical binding force.
Therefore (I propose) there must be a “chicken or the egg” question:
Do gluons CREATE:
a) THE “need” for quarks, or
b) do THE PRESENCE of quarks create THE “need” for gluons?

THE CONCLUSION, It would seem to me is that at the quantum level, the FUNDAMENTAL existential ( or that which came FIRST into being as “having being in time and space” ) is the GLUON; the strong force which came first as the underpinning of all matter, and not only that, as the energy which DEMANDED the existence of matter!