Had t hey originated in different areas , then its possible a cross of the 2 types may not be likely ??
so its more likely they are the same ,, just seperated by geography , most likely influenced by man ??
perhaps even a summer , winter crop ?? or at least used at different times for different purpose , and eventually seperated by the qualities within the variety ..
there are indica types that give a sativa high , and visa versa
Almost anything is possible. When trying to guess and connect the dots of a totally or nearly totally undocumented past that it comes down to is degree of probability.
Man could be an influencing factor, but then so could animals, in particular birds. That is why I pointed out how some areas are, or were, totally geographically isolated and that far back in time neither man nor animals could have been a factor, but in other areas, both are possibilities. But then the farther back in time you would do it would seem probable that man would become less and less of a factor and animals and possibly conditional changes would become the primary possible factors of influence.
I do not recall how far back in time the archeological dig I read about had gone, but unless evidence was found, which was not mentioned in what I read, one could only assume that when it came to cannabis that at that point in time, and in that region, any people were attempting to breed it, either as in pure strains or crosses, or were even growing it as a crop as opposed to just walking the countryside picking what was found that grew naturally.
While it is only my opinion, I feel that trying to recreate the history of cannabis is somewhat like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with enough pieces missing that when all the pieces you have are put together correctly it will still not be enough for a clear picture to be seen and only guesswork will be able to be relied on to fill in the missing pieces.
Just consider the inability of people to agree on the true origins of Haze, and that was not all that far back in time, not before people alive today would have been around to be able to have some chance of knowing for sure. So imagine the difficulties in correctly connecting the dots from a thousand or two thousand or three thousand or whatever number of years back would be like.
Traces of something found in a region may have originated there or been brought by a traveler or even an army passing through on it's way to ransack some other region, or by nomadic people who brought something with them as they passed through or possibly due to other reasons.
I am sure that in some cases some possibilities can be eliminated, or at least be shown to be of very low probability. But in other cases, at least at this point in time, it could come down to an assumption, to little more than a mental coin toss.