Comment by ezekiel68
2 hours ago
Still, 170,000 - 1.2M years is a fairly short amount of time if we go back only to the common ancestor who begat progeny that would become Pan and Autralopithecus (around 12 million years ago). It could be that early hide wearers started a trend that, to this day, continues to interfere with natural vitamin D metabolism (while also providing many benefits).
Our ancestors started losing their hair about 2 million years ago and the MC1R gene giving us eumelanin pigmentation was fully fixed in the population around 1.2 million years ago by which point we were mostly hairless. In that range is when our vitamin D metabolism evolved, so clothing would have been present for large fractions of our existence.
Going back to a common ancestor with monkeys is pointless because their vitamin d pathways are significantly different like 7-dehydrocholesterol secretions that metabolize to vitamin D via external UV exposure and are ingested during grooming.