India is known for being home to the oldest civilisation in the world and while it carries that title as a badge of honour, researchers have found that the Iron Age could have begun in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, well before 1,000 years than it was previously estimated.
Samples like charcoal and iron objects collected from burials located in the district of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu have been dated back to 3,345 BCE and 3,259 BCE, meaning that the Iron Age in this area was the oldest in the world.
Earlier, the Iron Age of the Hittite Empire in today’s Turkey was considered to be the oldest in the sense that dwellers from this area were believed to have used iron for the first time here than anywhere else.
Bursting with pride that the oldest traces of the Iron Age were found in his state, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin said, “We have scientifically established that iron was introduced 5,300 years ago in the Tamil landscape. The Iron Age began from Tamil land.”
Scholars believe these dates indicate the existence of a contemporary Iron Age civilisation in southern India that coexisted with the Indus Valley Civilisation in northern and northwestern India.
The report where these findings were published, called the ‘Antiquity of Iron: Recent Radiometric Dates from Tamil Nadu’ by K Rajan and R Sivananthan’, said, “When cultural zones located north of Vindhyas experienced Copper Age, the region south of Vindhyas might have entered Iron Age due to limited availability of commercially exploitable copper ore.”
Meanwhile, a study by Tamil Nadu’s archaeology department revealed that at least 90 per cent of graffiti marks found in various sites around the state were similar to the ones that existed in the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Calling the finding of the research a “turning point”, the Archaeological Survey of India’s former director general Rakesh Tiwari said, “Once it appeared that when Indus Valley was flourishing in the western part of the country, other areas did not have contemporary cultures. But now things are changing.”
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Did the Iron Age begin in India? About 2,000 years before anywhere in the world, says new study
