The Third Pillar: The Mineral Genome, Surface-Mediated Heredity and the Transition to Open Ended Evolution

The origin of life remains caught between the RNA World and Metabolism-First paradigms—but what if there was a third pillar? This paper introduces the Mineral Genome, a non-genomic mechanism for heredity and prebiotic evolution. Chemical networks write their history into mineral surfaces through irreversible chemisorption (Hard Layer) and reversible physisorption (Soft Layer), creating a persistent record of past activity. This Topological Inheritance allows future networks to inherit catalytic biases, enabling genuine Open-Ended Evolution long before DNA or RNA existed. Through mechanisms like Geometric Compounding and Structural Hysteresis, early chemical systems could accumulate complexity, sculpting mineral geographies that acted as scaffolds for functional polymers and ribozymes. The framework explains how evolution transitioned from structured matter to cellular life without requiring a miracle first genome—the first genome was not a molecule, it was a geography. The paper also provides a falsifiable experimental protocol, predicting measurable differences in formose network offspring seeded on mineral scaffolds, offering a pathway to empirically test pre-replicator heredity. Why it matters: Proposes a new, testable mechanism for prebiotic heredity. Resolves a key paradox in the origin-of-life problem: how evolution could start before replicators. Bridges the gap from simple chemistry to structured RNA-based metabolism. Introduces concepts applicable to mineral-mediated evolution, non-genomic inheritance, and the earliest steps of life.