Pre-replicative physical memory and asymmetric destruction in origin-of-life dynamics

This work proposes a minimal physical framework for the emergence of historical continuity in prebiotic systems, without postulating the early appearance of genetic information or faithful replication. The PRFE (Peptide–Ribose–Phosphate–Energy) model describes a sequence of out-of-equilibrium processes in which molecular structures are selected exclusively by persistence across environmental cycles. In this framework, memory arises as a distributed physical property of structural configurations that survive longer and participate in a greater number of reorganization events. Weak but cumulative physical biases, combined with asymmetric destruction and recurrent fragmentation, progressively concentrate the system in regions of configuration space characterized by higher structural order and longer lifetimes. The model provides a continuous causal trajectory linking peptide-supported assemblies to the appearance of pre-replicative nucleic dynamics, without introducing informational assumptions or discontinuities. Replication is treated not as the origin of history, but as an emergent regime that becomes statistically favored once structural memory exceeds a critical threshold. The PRFE framework reframes RNA-first scenarios as a limiting case within a broader physical regime and highlights the role of cyclic environments, persistence selection and cumulative bias in accelerating early molecular evolution within realistic geological timescales.