[Zenst]

Maybe, though even older usage "Some recent studies date the inception of iron metallurgy in Africa between 3000 and 2500 BCE" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa

But dry flat area's and many centuries of meterite build up, i'm sure there were many unique timelines for iron usage we may only speculate about.

[adrian_b]

Supposing that the dating of those African iron metallurgy sites is truly so early as claimed, that would be an independent discovery of the process, which does not seem to have had any influence upon the later discovery in Caucasus or Anatolia, of how to extract iron from iron ore, which spread during the 2nd millennium BC to the Mediterranean countries.