Err, pedantically, configure was not for cross Linux distro compatibility, but for cross unix compatibility. It existed long before Linux was a sparkle in Linus’s eye.

And even then, it handled even some non unix environments as well.

GNU autoconf was first released a few months before Linux.

Is there some older implementation/standard/practice of ./configure before autoconf?

Autoconf makes it convenient to write configure scripts. Configure scripts existed long before autoconf, but were written piecemeal.