Okay, assuming this means “how many Homo Sapiens ancestors did you have that spent substantial amounts of their working life farming”, I think every human being alive has around 25x more non-farmers than farmers as ancestors. I think the ratio is so large that the answers doesn’t change even if you ask “how many ancestors lived in agricultural societies” instead of “how many ancestors were farmers” and regardless of where your ancestors were—even comparing people whose ancestors were all in a place that invented agriculture early vs someone whose ancestors didn’t start farming until after the industrial revolution.
The only thing that matters, to the extent that it swamps every other variable, is how long humans have been farming. Per Wikipedia, Agriculture developed in multiple places around the world after the last Ice Age, ~10,000 years ago. Homo Sapiens is about 30 times older evolving ~300,000 ago. The number of years your ancestors could have possibly been farmers is a rounding error compared to that.
I don’t think changing generation length matters much—it’s probably between 15 and 30 years for basically all your ancestors up to the modern day, nowhere near the ratio it would need to make a difference to the answer. Pedigree collapse (some of your ancestors show up in multiple places in your family tree, moreso the farther back you go) matters, but again it can’t possible swamp the ~30x difference in number of generations. And, at the very least, you’re guaranteed to have at least 2 ancestors per generation.
Okay, assuming this means “how many Homo Sapiens ancestors did you have that spent substantial amounts of their working life farming”, I think every human being alive has around 25x more non-farmers than farmers as ancestors. I think the ratio is so large that the answers doesn’t change even if you ask “how many ancestors lived in agricultural societies” instead of “how many ancestors were farmers” and regardless of where your ancestors were—even comparing people whose ancestors were all in a place that invented agriculture early vs someone whose ancestors didn’t start farming until after the industrial revolution.
The only thing that matters, to the extent that it swamps every other variable, is how long humans have been farming. Per Wikipedia, Agriculture developed in multiple places around the world after the last Ice Age, ~10,000 years ago. Homo Sapiens is about 30 times older evolving ~300,000 ago. The number of years your ancestors could have possibly been farmers is a rounding error compared to that.
I don’t think changing generation length matters much—it’s probably between 15 and 30 years for basically all your ancestors up to the modern day, nowhere near the ratio it would need to make a difference to the answer. Pedigree collapse (some of your ancestors show up in multiple places in your family tree, moreso the farther back you go) matters, but again it can’t possible swamp the ~30x difference in number of generations. And, at the very least, you’re guaranteed to have at least 2 ancestors per generation.
This is a great question, thanks for posting it!
Why do you think pedigree collapse wouldn’t swamp the difference? I think that part’s underargued