  We address whether possible scale-dependent deviations from gaussianity in
the primordial density field that are consistent with the cosmic microwave
background observations could explain the apparent excess of early cluster
formation at high redshift. Using two phenomenological non-gaussian models we
find that at fixed normalisation to the observed local abundance of massive
clusters, the protoclusters observed at z~4 are significantly more likely to
develop in strongly non-gaussian models than in the gaussian paradigm. We
compute the relative z<1 evolution of X-ray cluster counts in the non-gaussian
case with respect to the gaussian expectation, and the relative excess
contribution to the CMB power spectrum due to the integrated thermal SZ effect.
We find that both the observed hints of an unexpectedly slow evolution in the
X-ray counts and the excess power at high l that may have been observed by CMB
interferometers can also be reproduced in our non-gaussian simulations.
