answer:Fundamentalism is evolutionary. In the early days of mankind, everyone believed in much the same thing and there was no such thing as liberal thought or fundamentalist thought. But as people got smarter, and moved from subsistence living to a more comfortable lifestyle, they had the ability to not work as hard, giving them time to think about what their beliefs were. Some people chose to be free thinkers, while others took a more literal / fundamentalist line. But the ability (and the luxury) to even have that freedom of thought evolved from mankind’s progress in creating a city/town culture. So fundamentalism as an extreme evolved. So to answer your question – it’s modern only in the sense that it came AFTER mankind was created and as a result of mankind’s ability to meet essential subsistence needs. But it’s not modern in the sense of 1800 and newer. You can see fundamentalists in the history of Ancient Israel (pharisees, Saducees), Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece. etc.—where not all people looked at the world the same way.