> primitive steel [made] by adding charcoal.
Isn't that backwards? Surely "primitive iron" was closer to what we call pig iron nowadays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron
That stuff is choke-full of carbon and silica, and is brittle as hell. To get it malleable (which is actually desirable in a weapon, so it wouldn't just snap in use), there is a separate process to decrease carbon content:
You're under the illusion that the west used kilns to melt iron into a liquid that they poured into a crucible during the Bronze Age. That's actually an ancient Chinese technique that was adopted long after the western Bronze Age ended and it does indeed create pig iron. But the west only adopted pig iron as an intermediate process for making steel starting in the middle ages.
Back then you just put the crushed (via hammer) iron ore and coal into a clay kiln (a bloomery). Because these furnaces couldn't reach the melting point of pure iron, the metal never liquefied. Then at the end you basically had mostly slag with some small iron pearls inside (a bloom). You had to hammer the slag off the iron under heat. Hence primitive wrought iron came first and because it had low carbon it was highly malleable.
The technique that was used to make primitive steel was very simple. In fact, it is basically the same process as was used to get the iron out of the ore. You make a steel tool with malleable wrought iron, pack it with powdered charcoal and seal them both inside of clay. You then heat up a kiln and the carbon diffuses into the outer surface of the iron. This process is known as case hardening.
Also you just linked an article that just told you everything I just wrote from memory:
>While the bloomery process produced wrought iron directly from ore, cast iron or pig iron were the starting materials used in the finery forge and puddling furnace. Pig iron and cast iron have higher carbon content than wrought iron, but have a lower melting point than iron or steel. Cast and especially pig iron have excess slag which must be at least partially removed to produce quality wrought iron. At foundries it was common to blend scrap wrought iron with cast iron to improve the physical properties of castings.
Yeah, so bloomeries produce wrought iron directly hence wrought iron came first.
Alexander had an iron sword. Julius had an iron sword.
The problem with iron is that it is very hard to make. Requires lots of fuel, labour and technology.