Complex numbers along with the Quaternions are the only finite dimensional associative division algebras that properly contain the reals. The interesting thing is that the 2d real space can be equipped with a multiplication operation that works. This isn’t always possible to do on a finite dimensional real vector space.

It happens to be true that this field called the complex numbers is a two dimensional real vector space. It took humans quite a long time to come up with 0 and negative numbers. There’s no way the jump to the complex numbers was going to be as easy and it isn’t as simple as, “numbers in 2d”. Why isn’t 3D a finite dimensional associative division algebra?