Do you have a reference for any of that? It sounds reasonable that vitamin deficiencies are the result of farming, but the loss of synthesis to the specific demand of increasing brain size seems like a too specific hypothesis. In particular, almost no primates synthesize C, while almost all mammals do. Britannica lists six vitamins that no vertebrates synthesize (though it includes D, which all land animals synthesize by sunlight). Other than C, I was unable to track down claims about variation across species. Britannica claims that “more highly evolved” animals need more vitamins.
We don’t have much information about disease among hunter-gatherers. Intermediate pastoralists are more accessible. The book Diseases in Human Evolution seems relevant. Chapter 19 lists many historical accounts of vitamin deficiency. Many were not the result not of all farming, but of the wrong grain. Scurvy was seasonal.
Do you have a reference for any of that? It sounds reasonable that vitamin deficiencies are the result of farming, but the loss of synthesis to the specific demand of increasing brain size seems like a too specific hypothesis. In particular, almost no primates synthesize C, while almost all mammals do. Britannica lists six vitamins that no vertebrates synthesize (though it includes D, which all land animals synthesize by sunlight). Other than C, I was unable to track down claims about variation across species. Britannica claims that “more highly evolved” animals need more vitamins.
We don’t have much information about disease among hunter-gatherers. Intermediate pastoralists are more accessible. The book Diseases in Human Evolution seems relevant. Chapter 19 lists many historical accounts of vitamin deficiency. Many were not the result not of all farming, but of the wrong grain. Scurvy was seasonal.