Yes, exactly, the same story is with the Damascus steel. We now know that the secret to it, beside the cool look, was that it contained many carbon nanotubes in steel that greatly improved the performance of the blade. That was achieved by a combination of special properties of the iron ore (supposedly sourced from somewhere in India) and the technology itself that got lost over the time. Of course, modern steel is way better and we now actually understand the tech behind the carbon nanotubes, but the old masters were achieving it all by simply conducting many, many experiments.