How chemistry produced the first evolving replicator

Identify a sequence of chemically and geologically plausible steps, with rates under stated early-Earth conditions (temperature, pH, mineral surfaces, wet-dry cycles), that takes a mixture of small prebiotic molecules to a population of informational polymers that replicate with heritable variation and undergo Darwinian selection. A complete answer specifies each step and demonstrates the chain in the laboratory or in a quantitative model with measured rate constants.

A laboratory demonstration, starting from prebiotic feedstocks, of a polymer population that replicates and adapts under selection without enzymes from modern life.