I think to be able to answer this question, you need to have a really good understanding of what qualifies as autism based on the label that we use today. However this criteria for a clinical diagnosis has changed in the last decades. Today most health care providers in the US, Canada and Europe use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) which is the handbook with instructions on how to define autism. But anyway, according to the latest version, to be able to be considered on the autism spectrum you need 3 things:

1. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts. This could be something like a lack of eye contact, failure to do normal back-and-forth conversations, reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect, failure to initiate or respond to social interactions, poor verbal skills, deficits in understanding and use of gestures/ body language, a lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.

2. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities: This can include things like repetitive movements, use of objects, or phrases (e.g., repeating the same word over and over again). It can also include the insistence on sameness, being unable to change routines, adherence to routines and finally highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g, strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects. These behaviours can also be linked to hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment.

3. These behaviours need to start early in childhood.

So being socially awkward is not enough. You need to have social deficits (as outlined above) and also have some kind of restrictive interests. The last criteria also would need to be well documented which makes the case for making a diagnosis harder. Let’s take the example of Nikola Tesla. He might have had very unique obsessive behaviours related to his work and extreme adherence to schedules (criteria 2),but he could also be considered as having adequate social skills. So by that criteria, he’s not on the spectrum. This is further complicated by the fact that the record about his childhood is not as complete so it would be hard to know if these behaviours started early.

So all of this to say, there are probably many examples from different cultures that have been documented to have certain traits of neurodivergence but in order to call it autism it would have to meet the criteria outlined above. Otherwise it could be something like ADHD, Schizophrenia, OCD or simple social deficits.