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We propose that adaptive immunity, with combinatorial diversity emerging ~0.5\u2009billion years ago during the Cambrian explosion, was based on extant and established complex cellular interactions, derived over the previous 3.5\u2009billion years of life\u2019s history. These coordinate cellular processes originated to police epithelia against aberrant or rogue cells\u2014inherent to complex multicellularity. Primordial surveillance relied on maintaining epithelial integrity and specialized immune sentinels. Early deposition of tissue-resident \u03b3\u03b4 T and natural killer cells detects abnormalities and emergent stress signals as damage-associated molecular pattern molecules (DAMPs), independently of classical major histocompatibility (MHC) presentation to \u03b1\u03b2 T cells. 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