Are you referring to steel found indigenously within meteor fragments, steel forged from meteoric iron, or was this just a misspeaking?
Yes, there are some instances of meteoric iron being used.
I'd thought there were archeological finds of pallasite as well, though may have been confusing those with the Fukang meteorite. Gorgeous material, though.
There are several examples in the Wikipedia entry
Even felling big trees doesn't need iron tools - controlled fire will do most of the work: http://www.cherokeeheritage.org/attractions/dugout-canoe/
https://youtu.be/zVPUFMwm73Y?t=228
Relevant: Coppice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_pile_dwellings_aro...
Not fine woodworking, perhaps, but possible.
Most early construction was based on found shelter (caves), hides, sod or turf, brick, or stone. Locally-available and hand-workable with very simple tools.
Ale native American lodgehouses and pueblos (adobe walls, timber roofs), also stone tools.
if there was a really really old civilization, wouldn't their iron tools be degraded beyound recognition? (especially if it was a coastal civilization later drowned in the salty sea)
Oh and a (spaced out) esoteric explanation, some people tried to convince me of: this old civilization was so advanced it had quantum technology aka magic to get things done and eventually wiped itself out in a civil war ..
Then of course their tools and other artefacts would have been traded all over the place. Stone tools from 100k years ago and more got traded or carried thousands of miles and all we see are implements for the hunter gatherer lifestyle.
It doesn’t make any sense.
For most of these cultures, "cities" did not exist, and even assuming they did, from the times of the first early-agricultural settlements, might have numbered a few thousand, perhaps tens of thousands of souls. With little transport, food was either sourced locally, or brought in on boats, rafts, or barges. Total collection areas for bulk goods of more than a few kilometers would be highly unlikely, though longer trade routes for rare materials (timber, metals, spices, hides) might have existed.
A principle relic of such settlements are their rubbish tips. Again, lack of transport meant that waste and filth were moved a few meters, for as long as the settlement existing -- decades, centuries, or millennia. In many places these are the principle evidence of early settlements, particularly shell mounds (shellfish are an easy, reliable, and sustaining prey), and can themselves measure several meters high and tens of meters across, particularly on otherwise flat aluvial or riparian landscapes.
The TLDR is that a huge low-lying basin of fertile land around what is now the British Isles was inundated at the end of the last interglacial. (What is now the North Sea/English Channel was one of those river valleys you alude to.) The British Isles today would have been the relatively cold, arid, mountainous uplands survivors migrated into when their fertile, low-lying territory got flooded out. Assuming population density in the chilly uplands (glaciers, remember!) was low, then you'd expect the frequency of surviving stone tools to be lower, reflecting that. People don't leave stuff lying around in places where people don't live!
There are plenty of very fertile, habitable areas in the same region that would have been just as attractive. So settlements? Sure. But surely a civilization is more than just a settlement?
Edit: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_L...
This image shows the fastest sea level rose was around 15K years ago, which is pretty close to the Neolithic era. At it's fastest rate sea level was rising at 30 meters per 1000 years, or about 3 centimeters a year. Ok, that's a very slow moving train. It's pretty easy to get off the tracks before it hits you. Doubtful to have cause civilization decline especially when it lines up closer to the onset of agriculture.
Say you built your town on a 3% grade next to the water. That's 3 meters of descent for every 100 meters of distance. If sea level rises 50 meters, your town's ruins aren't just ~45 meters underwater, there's also almost a kilometer and a half out to sea. Nobody is looking there.
You're viewing their arguments as "Water overtook their cities and they died because of it".
Their argument is that "They died out and then water overtook their cities".
Having a civilization and keeping civilization are two different things. Once humans are capable of thinking of it, it would happen over and over again. But when it fails, the survivors might have a sort of cultural PTSD comparable to the Sodom and Gomorrah story in the Bible. People might resist trying again for generations (also, how many places could you found a civilization in a world without sanitation, metallurgy or medicine?)
That's a great question to ask of Venice, for example.
As an example: the initial human settlement of the Americas likely followed sea routes along the North, Central, and South American coasts. The region near Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, with the Channel Islands, extended much further out to sea, with some of the islands being connected to land, others being only a short distance (rather than 20-30 miles) offshore.
Settlements along both the coast and shore -- the most viable parts of these regions -- would now be utterly flooded. There are few or no traces of the initial migrations, save for a few inland settlements and venturing / foraging parties, though later settlements may exist.
Much construction and many artefacts would be of earth, wood, hides, and plant fibres, most rotting or melting away under water. There are simply few surviving remains, and those which might exist are hard to find and access.
The climate change itself would have occurred over centuries, with multiple moves and resettlements, or disappearance of entire cities. It's rare for even preindustrial civilisations to endure at their peak for more than a few centuries.
There are, of course, numerous other possible events, a synthesis, or even pure fabrication, as the basis.
How in tune with nature or whatever people in a society are on an individual basis wouldn't affect the total impact if whatever they are doing works well enough that everything keeps growing. I'm kind of thinking of Jevon's paradox.
Surviving artifacts of the metal ages are very much the norm though, so I wouldn't expect early human villages to have gone beyond the stone age. And with coastal weathering it would be hard to identify any stone tooling from that long ago.
Off topic: I sometimes browse in in-cognito mode. This was one of those times. I clicked through to the article, and the website detected that I was in in-cognito mode and said I wasn't allowed to read the article in in-cognito mode. I feel as if this walled-garden approach is getting out of hand.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-there-wasnt-an...
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/defant-analysis-of-hanc...