That's non-controversial, regular knowledge right? That the proto iron age happened all over in 1 or 2 centuries in which meteors dropped iron from the sky. It was in regular history books when i was a kid.
They always brush right over why it was raining iron. Isn't that crazy wth is that about?
1st page Google hit
https://www.cnet.com/pictures/swords-from-the-stars-weapons-forged-from-meteoric-iron/
Ah. I misunderstood what you were talking about. Yes, its possible our first iron was from asteroids because it didn't need to be smelted to be used. In asteroids, especially after surviving the burn off from entry into the atmosphere, it is already in a relatively pure form.
I don't know if it's true that we only used it in that form prior to relatively recently. I've been seeing a lot of stuff lately about us having knowledge of smelting iron going far back, but it looks like it was lost knowledge. During the time period in question (3-10k years ago), it is entirely possible that it was gotten from asteroids until we "relearned" how to smelt iron a couple thousand years ago.
Well 1 tension in your timeline is thinking "man" had this technology andmaybe not "some men" who probably made up stories about it and only taught sycophants and hucksters the racket and the cover story