@Ixiaz it's more like how society grew stable enough to discard materials we're not familiar with. if a system works, it works, much like how modern medical practices only had room to develop after people started to question everything, and we started defining phenomenons because of those people
for example, on the wild goose chase of finding El Dorado, a city of gold, they threw out tons and tons of platinum which has more value than gold, simply because it wasn't a yellow tint they were familiar with. gold was still used as currency during that period, but they swept a bunch of platinum into the see because it "wasn't gold" gold today, aside from the accessories, is mainly utilized in circuit boards but that's it.