Yes. You need to remember than neither language was relevant yet; I'd draw that line around Perl 5 and Python 2. Don't forget that Perl 6 spent two decades in development hell.

Not that the TIOBE index is perfect, but you can see what happened since 2001. Perl used to be a lot more popular for early dynamic websites and systems glue, but by 2011, Python had gotten a lot more popular in those roles.

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/