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According to Wikipedia the oldest known steel artifacts are from Asia Minor (the Kaman-Kalehöyük site in modern-day Turkey) which predates European steal by about a millenium which seems to support part of their claim.

For the claim about African metallurgists I suppose I'll have to wait to see what kind of evidence they provide before deciding if they are being "sloppy".

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One thing that bothers me about this sort of "Europe / Asia" division is how anachronistic it is when we talk about events in deep history.

In Antiquity, this division would be unnatural. Asia Minor was an integral constituent part of the Mediterranean civilization, unlike, say, contemporary Germany. The ancients would be fairly confused if we told them that we now put dividing lines between North Africa, Asia Minor+Levant and so-called Europe. For them, it was a bigger civilizational unit, a maritime continent so to say. And the idea that Asia Minor somehow belongs to the same unit as India or China would feel positively weird.

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