Recent years have seen an extension of our knowledge of how organic chemical compounds may have been synthesized in preorganismal times. The ease with which synthesis of amino acids and other organic compounds can be effected in gas mixtures has been demonstrated. It shows that in certain instances rock and mineral surfaces can act as catalytic materials for polymerization reactions. Eugenol, catechol, and phenylalanine were subjected to heat and pressure or exposed to H2O2 in the presence of various rocks and minerals, including chrysotile, granite, micas, calcite, and others. In the presence of chrysotile, eugenol-water mixtures form an array of products, including lignin-like polymers, at 128[degree] C, 5 atmospheres pressure. These products are different from those formed in the absence of mineral. At 25[degree]C the three phenols form different products on different mineral surfaces. These brown salt-precipitable catechol derivatives vary in spectral properties and in elementary composition according to the mineral upon which they are found. The mildness of the conditions used, as well as the use of natural minerals as catalysts, make the present work relevant to problems of chemical transformation under early terrestrial conditions and provide an experimental approach to biopolymer genesis in the prebiological stage of evolution.