To me, at least, it doesn't sound like they had "nothing to do with" life - I wonder if it could be a precursor to life. If mineral formations were forming "cell-wall-like" structures made of nonmetals, that sounds like it might have been a naturally forming scaffold for the formation of the earliest cell walls. Natural small enclosures with attraction to carbon and nonmetals seems like they'd make a really good substrate for infinite separate runs of the natural experiment leading up to the first replicating molecules.
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To me, at least, it doesn't sound like they had "nothing to do with" life - I wonder if it could be a precursor to life. If mineral formations were forming "cell-wall-like" structures made of nonmetals, that sounds like it might have been a naturally forming scaffold for the formation of the earliest cell walls. Natural small enclosures with attraction to carbon and nonmetals seems like they'd make a really good substrate for infinite separate runs of the natural experiment leading up to the first replicating molecules.