Conflating Asia with Asia Minor/Middle east muddies things (there is a lot of history going on in both places), but then the implication is Europe didn't know about steel till fairly recently seems at odds with current understanding -it appears to go as far back as the African instance and perhaps further back. So, there may be some nuance with regard to purity or method or composition, but without putting that forward, it appears really sloppy in this area --so where else is he or she playing fast and loose?

"That is a little-known fact in the Western world, where steel production only took off in the nineteenth century with fossil fuels. However, Asian and African metallurgists developed high-quality steels much earlier, and this knowledge eventually allowed Europeans to do the same – on a much larger scale."

Did it "take off" elsewhere? What does take off mean? Oh, is the topic high-quality? What is that? What defines high-quality? Try to be a little precise rather than throw things out there.