Why can’t domestic sheep naturally shed their winter coats?
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Because they’re mutants. Wild sheep have fur that it not curly, and they shed it annually. If you keep them in a pen, you may be able to gather the hair, but it isn’t wool. It can’t be spun into thread or yarn, although it can be made into felt.
At some point in the early Bronze Age, probably in Eastern Europe, somebody had a mutated sheep with weirdo fluff fur. The farmers found the fur useful, so they bred the weird sheep and every domestic sheep is descended from it.
I don’t know if anyone has tried to isolate the wool gene in bones, but that bronze age time period shows a distinct increase in sheep bones vs. goat bones in archaeological sites. But those are fairly difficult to tell apart, once they’re chopped up for food.
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