u/19seventyfour Discussed it more with the guy. General opinion is semi-iron-smelting was in place since the early bronze age. Not hot enough to properly melt off all the oxides and contaminants from the iron, and not in a properly oxygen-free environment to prevent more scale building up, and not with a reliably good system for carbonizing the iron. Also note that it generally wasn't hot enough to alloy the carbon to the iron to create steel (need like 1,700C for that), so the carbon would mostly serve as just another contaminant making it brittle.

Still, they apparently did extract iron from sands and ores this way since early in the bronze age, creating blooms of random quality. They could pound most of the scale out of, and could make the iron thicker to make up for issues of brittleness. This was hard work with no promise of quality, but eventually these factors improved until a proper iron age industry started.

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This is actually related to meteorites, in that partial smelting is necessary to get rid of some of the contaminants, but it is a lot easier than working with terrestrial ores that are less rich in iron.