For a lot of early wow wasn't the issue more that tanks didn't have good aoe threat rather than tanks not being able to survive multiple mobs? I know as early as BC having paladin tanks aoe in heroic dungeons was common practice, and in WOTLK dungeons only got easier with less CC used. The most i remember CC being used in dungeons was during vanilla, and by WOTLK it seemed to have mostly died out in dungeons. From what I remember anyway, it's been years.