I don't think you're wrong, but I do think that the "modern" world - which I guess I'd label as anything that happened after the invention of writing and cities - really let those individuals thrive, and let their work become very useful for the world at large.

Trying to diagnose people across millennia is a fool's errand, but I'd wager a lot to say that people like Newton & Tesla were at the very least neurodivergent in some way, and they've had wildly outsized impacts on the world.