When Solomon looked closely at his game, he found that some groups of mortals, though completely ignorant of everything around them, appear to follow the angels around. Thanks to the new births in each angel's presence, there is an overall increase in the mortal population at these sites. The new mortals move randomly away from their birthplace, but if the angel's random hop is onto their turf, they multiply again. The result is islands of life that move around the playing area, following their angels. Islands can grow, join and split up again.
Small islands are unstable, but can become more stable when they merge to form larger islands.
Because of this apparently adaptive behaviour, the pockets of population survive and proliferate. Ever the underdog, life simply blows a raspberry at the big bad world. But Solomon's mortals are totally unaware of their environment, and have no life goals. We start with very stupid microscopic components. The microscopic agents are nonadaptive, but the collective object has a behaviour which can be called adaptive.