Older and some current systems were designed to be installed in a “looped” or “home-run” fashion. “Looped” means that the speakers are wired from speaker to speaker to speaker. “Homerun” means that each speaker is ran back to the master, all alone and by itself.
To determine how your system is wired, a number count of cables at the master and the number of remote speakers must be done. If there are as many cables, as speakers, you have “home-run” wiring. On the other hand, if the number of speakers exceeds the number of cables at the master, your system is “looped”.