Consider that in 2006, MPTCs with fundeps was the preferred way to represent "a collection of items that can be compared via equality" [1]. Associated types were a vague research idea [2] that showed a lot of promise, but hadn't been implemented in any language with type inference (they did exist in C++ templates, but C++ isn't exactly what people think of when you say "modern type system"). Now both Rust and Swift feature polished implementations of associated types and use them pervasively in the standard library.
[1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Advanced_type_classes#...