We analyze the effect of variation of fundamental couplings and mass scales on primordial nucleosynthesis in a systematic way. The first step establishes the response of primordial element abundances to the variation of a large number of nuclear physics parameters, including nuclear binding energies. We find a strong influence of the n-p mass difference, of the nucleon mass and of A = 3,4,7 binding energies. A second step relates the nuclear parameters to the parameters of the Standard Model of particle physics. The deuterium, and, above all, 7Li abundances depend strongly on the average light quark mass. We calculate the behaviour of abundances when variations of fundamental parameters obey relations arising from grand unification. We also discuss the possibility of a substantial shift in the lithium abundance while the deuterium and 4He abundances are only weakly affected.
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