How is GraphQL different from the old days?

In the old days we have API to get data, and then later we have RESTful, and then now we have GraphQL.

In the old days, we have custom-made query, to get exactly what we wanted, no more, no less.

And then, we have RESTful, and it was somehow treated like a gospel. And then, it was said that it was overfetching data, and underfetching data at the same time, and the exact data is wanted instead, no more, no less.

And then we have GraphQL... it just seem we are back to the old days, except in the old days, the backend team wrote the SQL queries for us, and use table join to give us exactly what we wanted. But now, the full stack or front end engineers can write it. How is GraphQL different from the old days?