Activated RNA monomers would have been synthesized de novo from prebiotic organic and inorganic chemicals on primordial Earth (1). Random oligomerization of activated monomers would lead to the formation of functional and non-functional (random) oligonucleotides (2), which could serve as templates (3) that direct the copying of the complementary strand (4). Strand separation must occur for the newly copied RNA transcripts (5) to progress to a new round of replication (6). Governed by the forces of molecular selection, RNAs with increasing structural and functional sophistication would appear over time (7), leading to the emergence of the first protocells and the dawn of the RNA world (8).