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That's a safe assumption. There's not much evidence of leg locks in early bjj vs catch. There was also a ton of commingling in the early days so there's that.
There's plenty of leglocks in early catch-wrestling, toe-holds, knee-bars, Achilles locks...also in Japanese jujutsu, such as in SK Uyenishi's instructionals. Evan Lewis broke a guy's knee when he was barred from using chokes. Paul Prehn goes pretty in depth about leglocks and the toe-hold in particular.
Definitely true that in the early days there was lots of commingling as you say.
As far as the heel-hook particularly, that moves history is hard to trace. It gained popularity in Japan during the 70's via Ivan Gomes. Where did Gomes get it from...? And who was using it prior to Gomes bringing it to Japan? Its hard to really find clear evidence one way or the other but the likelihood is that Gomes got it from a Brazilian catch/luta livre practitioner. If he had gotten it from Carlson Gracie, then the question would be why the technique gained essentially no steam in BJJ at the time and wasn't talked about or really documented.
On one hand, given the toe-hold, knee-bar and Achilles lock's popularity in catch-wrestling, you'd think that people would have at someone point stumbled onto a heel-hook and likewise for sambo. Its hard for me to believe that people who practiced Commando sambo never developed a heel-hook. But again, I haven't found any specific evidence that they did.
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