A graph database is a data management system software. The building blocks are vertices and edges. To put it in a more familiar context, a relational database is also a data management software in which the building blocks are tables. Both require loading data into the software and using a query language or APIs to access the data.
Relational databases boomed in the 1980s. Many commercial companies (i.e. Oracle, Ingres, IBM) backed the relational model (tabular organization) of data management. In that era, the main data management need was to generate reports.