Eli5 why is aluminium not used as a material until relatively recently whilst others metals like gold, iron, bronze, tin are found throughout human history?

Question

Eli5 why is aluminium not used as a material until relatively recently whilst others metals like gold, iron, bronze, tin are found throughout human history?

In: 7474

Answer 1

Gold is found lying around as pure metal.

Copper can be produced essentially by putting the ore in a wood fire

Iron can be produced by putting the ore in a very hot charcoal fire for a long time and controlling the ratio of fuel to air – tricky but only needs iron age technology

Aluminium requires electricity to extract it from ore (because it’s more reactive than carbon, so we can’t use carbon to remove the oxygen from aluminium oxide) so it couldn’t be produced before we had good control of electricity in the 19th century