A new picture is being formed of an Earth that was a giant mega-organism called LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). LUCA is what came before single-celled bactera and complex eukayrotes (which became animals and plants). The idea is that the primordial soup of Earth was a giant melange of mostly non-working levers and gears (proteins, etc.), but dotted with some functional and self-sustaining loops of chemical factories. Genes were traded freely, there wasn't really competition yet between organisms, and the concept of a membrane hadn't solidified yet. In other words, it was a free-for-all mixture of automata and pseudo-automata waiting to develop enough patterns and templates to create the building blocks for more complex life.

This is how I visualize the precursors to life:

(From Conway's Game of Life)