[coliveira]

In fact it makes little sense to talk about time before the big bang, because inside a singularity time moves infinitely slow. So the point is that, yes, the universe never really started because time didn't exist before the singularity. The universe only evolved to a different dimension, so to speak, and time as we know started to exist when the big bang occurred.

[_0w8t]

The question about existence of time before singularity does not have an answer, rather than affirmative no.

A singularity means that all timelines goes through it, but it is impossible to make continues extension of the timelines past the singularity in the current physical models. That literally means that anything is possible with the timeline prior that. The timeline can jump, be replaced by a set of random points, became a multidimensional surface, go back etc. It may even indeed disappear, but we do not know.