I suspect wolves were semi-domesticated in multiple places where hunter gatherers and wild wolves coexisted. But in most cases the domestication may not have gone so far as to establish a large population of domesticated wolves that were bred completely separately from the original wild population, so:
1. They mostly couldn't drift very far from being indistinguishable from wild wolves. Only a few could.
2. Because the overall population of all domesticated wolves were small, when on the rare occasions when multiple domesticated populations interbreed, genetic drift would have a high chance of randomly allowing some sets of genes to predominate over the rest, thus obscuring the multiple origins of domestication.
Just my theory.
1. They mostly couldn't drift very far from being indistinguishable from wild wolves. Only a few could.
2. Because the overall population of all domesticated wolves were small, when on the rare occasions when multiple domesticated populations interbreed, genetic drift would have a high chance of randomly allowing some sets of genes to predominate over the rest, thus obscuring the multiple origins of domestication.
Just my theory.
