Yes! Although the concept of lietmotiv became a more formal concept through the works of Richard Wagner, and Guiseppi Verdi!

But the idea and formal processes date back to the baroque or possibly even midieval eras. The most prominent examples i can think of fall under the form of fugues. Where a melody is written and strictly immitated and developed using a "set of tools" like augmentation, dimenution, and inversion to name a few.

I would imagine that many forms of non western folk music also relied heavily on the idea of a theme so as to be easily passed down orally, but I'm speculating. Non western music history is still a bit outta my wheel house.