A recent study has uncovered iron artefacts that are 5,300 years old. It suggests the Iron Age may have first begun in Tamil Nadu—not Asia Minor as widely believed. It also raises important questions about the Indus Valley Civilisation—and the progress of human history. In part one, we look at the great Tamil quest for iron.
First, a human history refresher
In history books, our civilisational past is divided into the following linear stages:
The Stone Age: spanned the greatest period of time—and it itself divided into the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and the Neolithic eras. The oldest stone tool is around 3 million years old. This is also around the time when we discovered fire. By the end of this stage, we have made the other great discovery: agriculture.
The Bronze Age: Around 3000 BCE, we discovered the value of metals—starting with copper and moving on to the far sturdier bronze—created by smelting copper, tin and other metals together. Different human settlements also discovered each other—marking the beginning of trade, alliances, wars and other forms of globalisation.
The Iron Age: We’re not sure why the Bronze Age ended, but it is followed around 1200 BCE by the Iron Age. That’s around 3,200 years ago. Conventional wisdom places its origins in Southwestern Europe and the Middle East. The earliest finds date back to Anatolia—as in Asia Minor, most of which is taken up by modern-day Turkey.
Except maybe not. Maybe the Iron Age actually began much earlier in Tamil Nadu.
The great Tamil quest for iron
Contrary to popular belief, Tamil Nadu was the focus of the earliest archaeological digs in India—not Harrappa up North:
When Alexander Rea, former ASI superintendent from Southern Circle, excavated Adichanallur (southern Tamil Nadu) between 1899 and 1905, and published a catalogue of antiquities in 1915, Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa were not even in the scene. The idea of what is now known as Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) was unheard of. Even before Rea in 1876, Dr Jagor, a German ethnologist, had explored Adichanallur. In that sense, Adichanallur represents one of the earliest and significant excavations done by ASI.
However, with the exciting discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation in the 1920s, the South receded in interest and importance. That’s until 2022—when an iron sword was discovered in a burial site—dated between 1604 and 1416 BC.
The politics of archaeology: The real impetus for the quest for Tamil Nadu’s Iron Age was political:
Since 2015, when archaeologists began digging at Keeladi, there has been a lot of excitement about Tamil Nadu’s ancient history. Soon after the DMK won the state election in 2021, the government began work on six more sites, unearthing evidence to prove the antiquity of Tamil culture.
Then came CM MK Stalin—who was convinced that the ASI’s lack of interest in South Indian digs was political—i.e. driven instead by the BJP’s investment in Aryans in the North. He has since bankrolled an ambitious and far-ranging mission focused on unearthing ancient iron in Tamil Nadu
2022: The first significant breakthrough
Stalin announced that archaeologists had uncovered evidence that Tamil Nadu was home to the earliest Iron Age sites discovered in India. There were four key sites:
- Keeladi—located about 12 km south of Madurai.
- Adichanallur in the Thoothukudi district in southern Tamil Nadu.
- Sivakalai–which is about 25km from Adichanallur.
- Mayiladumparai in Krishnagiri district
The most exciting among these was Mayiladumparai:
A report on a dig at Mayiladumparai in Krishnagiri district had confirmed the use of iron in Tamil Nadu as early as 2172 BCE, or at least 4,200 years ago. That effectively makes Mayiladumparai, in north-western Tamil Nadu, the oldest Iron Age site in India. It indicates that Tamils who lived 4,200 years ago were aware of iron technology, had tools and weapons, and were an agrarian society.
Until now, the oldest sites found were near Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) and Brahmagiri (Karnataka)---and only dated back to the second millennium. The Iron Age started in Tamil Nadu more than six centuries earlier. But not everyone was convinced of what any of this meant—including respected experts. But there was evidence of one mindblowing fact.
When things become super political….
The Indus Valley connection: The excavations showed clear links to the Harappans: “Across all sites in Tamil Nadu, we see proof of Indus Valley signs, graffiti, inscribed potsherds, paintings, which provides us the potential to study the connections with Indus Valley Civilisation.” More importantly, the connection was not trivial:
In particular, the researchers interpreted the graffiti they discovered on the artefacts as demonstrative of a linguistic link between the Indus script, which is yet to be deciphered, and the Tamil-Brahmi script. This in turn provided a strong impetus to the idea of an ancient link between the original early, non-Aryan settlers of the Indus Valley and sites in South India.
The big (political) question: Was this Dravidian civilisation a contemporary of Indus Valley or was Indus Valley itself Dravidian in origin:
To fully understand what happened at Keeladi, one should bear in mind Tamil nationalist ancient claims that the Indus Valley Civilization was Dravidian. This narrative stands in sharp divergence with the one promoted by Hindutva circles and this is reinforced by the opposition between Tamil Nadu state and the Central Government.
Does Tamil art imitate reality? The 2022 findings helped prove that the ancient Sangam Tamil literature reflects lived reality of a civilisation—that equalled (or surpassed) that of Indus Valley:
The finds from the digs provide “much-needed evidence” that the flourishing trade, culture and cosmopolitan lifestyle described expansively in the 2,381 poems by 473 poets of the Sangam literature era, 2,000 years ago, was rooted in the real world.
Here’s one such example from the literature that reflects the use of iron:
A Puranaanooru poem, a classical text from that era, speaks about how it is the duty of the mother to give birth and nurture the child, of the father to make him a warrior and an intellectual, of the blacksmith to give him instruments (for warfare) and of the king to show him the path of righteousness.
Point to note: The study also offered Stalin a great opportunity to take direct aim at Hindutva rewriting of ancient history: “Some try to build their history on the basis of imaginary stories. Unlike them, we are trying to establish our historical roots through facts and science.”
The bottomline: In part two, we look at the latest study that offers an even more radical revelation—that the Iron Age may have begun in Tamil Nadu—thousands of years before the artefacts found in Anatolia. If true, India could well upend the story of human evolution. But more importantly for Indians, what does that mean for the Indus Valley Civilisation and those Aryans?
Reading list
Discover Magazine has a good overview of the stages of human history. For more on the 2022 revelations, read The Print and The News Minute. Mint Lounge has the best, most comprehensive overview of why Tamil Nadu’s ancient iron matters.
