Stalin: Advent of Iron Age from Tamil soil

The Iron Age, when the discovery of iron smelting technology helped revolutionise agriculture, war and construction, is considered to have begun around 1,400 BCE - 1,500 BCE in India

The Iron Age began on Tamil soil, chief minister MK Stalin said on Thursday, offering test reports from top institutions and testimony from experts as proof to bolster a narrative that centres on the supremacy of an ancient Dravidian civilisation.

Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin’s comment comes amid a polarising debate on India’s ancient history and conflicting theories of Aryan migration – topics that have cast a long shadow on contemporary politics and fuelled regional pride (PTI)

The Iron Age, when the discovery of iron smelting technology helped revolutionise agriculture, war and construction, is considered to have begun around 1400 BCE - 1500 BCE in India, and helped catalyse larger settlements and cities.

But Stalin’s comments pushed back the date by more than two millennia and suggested that Tamil Nadu might have been among the first places on earth to have begun using molten iron. Releasing carbon dating results from international institutions, Stalin said the reports pointed to the use of iron in the region to the beginning of 4th millennium BCE.

“With immense pride and unmatched satisfaction, I have declared to the world: The Iron Age began on Tamil soil,” he said.

“Based on results from world-renowned institutions, the use of iron in Tamil Nadu dates back to the beginning of 4th millennium BCE, establishing that iron usage was prominent in South India over 5,300 years ago,” he added.

Till now, the advent of the Iron Age in India was considered to be the painted grey ware culture in the northern Gangetic plains in around 1,500 BCE.

Stalin’s comment comes amid a polarising debate on India’s ancient history and conflicting theories of Aryan migration – topics that have cast a long shadow on contemporary politics and fuelled regional pride.

The findings also give ammunition to Stalin’s vow when he took over as chief minister in 2021 that his government will pursue archaeological excavations to prove that the history of the Indian subcontinent cannot overlook Tamil Nadu, as part of a larger ideological effort to position himself as a staunch opponent of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“I am announcing a great anthropological research declaration through this event that the Iron Age began in Tamil Nadu,” Stalin said at an event in Chennai to release a 73-page report by the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology (TNSDA) titled, ‘Antiquity of Iron- Recent radiometric dates from Tamil Nadu’ that records these findings.

“The introduction of iron was the most important technology of human civilisation,” he said. “I am telling the world today, the technology of smelting iron began in Tamil Nadu around 5,300 years ago. I am saying it with scientific evidence from recent chronometric results. We can now confidently say that iron was introduced in South India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, around 3,345 BCE.”

The CM said that what was written in Tamil ancient literature was now becoming scientifically proven history, thanks to the meticulous efforts of the “Dravidian model of government”.

“The history of the Indian subcontinent can no longer overlook Tamil Nadu. In fact, it must begin here!” he said.

Stalin shared results of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates from samples that were ostensibly collected from various excavation sites (Adichanallur, Sivagalai, Mayiladumparai, Mangadu, Thelunganur, and Kilnamandi) and sent to laboratories in India and overseas, and validated by 10 experts. The AMS dating was done at Beta Analytical Laboratory in USA’s Florida, the OSL dates were obtained from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow, and Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.

All of these labs have given identical analysis reports about the Iron Age in Tamil Nadu, Stalin added. “The results from the laboratories have been sent to renowned archaeologists across the globe and they have hailed the Tamil Nadu government and the state archaeology department for these initiatives,” he said. “People who mocked us saying literature can never become history are now fascinated with the way we have proved our history scientifically.”

According to the authors of the TNSDA report K Rajan and R Sivananthan, the findings introduce a new hypothesis that the Copper Age in northern India and the Iron Age of southern India were probably contemporaneous. Five artefacts from Sivagalai in present day Thoothukudi district were taken for analysis with a potsherd going back to 685 BCE and a paddy sample collected from a burial urn to 1,155 BCE. “The other three dates falling between 2,953 BCE and 3,345 BCE yielded iron objects,” states the report. “In this sense, the introduction of iron in Tamil Nadu goes back to the first quarter of the 4th millennium BCE.”

The report, which HT has seen, quoted Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti, an archaeologist and professor emeritus of South Asian Archaeology at Cambridge University, who had in the 1970s challenged the theory that iron technology was imported to India. “The discovery is of such a great importance that it will take some more time before its implication sinks in,” Chakrabarti was quoted as saying in the report.

The CM attached on X a purported radiocarbon dating report from US-based Beta Analytic from 2021 that apparently analysed 28 samples and found that they dated back to between 2,900 BCE and 3,500 BCE.

He also attached reports from the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences – both from 2023 – that ostensibly showed that samples from Sivagalai were between 3,300 and 4,500 years old.

On January 6, while inaugurating a conference in Chennai to mark the Centenary year of the Indus Valley Civilisation, Stalin announced a prize of $1 million to anyone who deciphered the civilisation’s ancient script.

The excavations at Keeladi, beginning in 2015, first narrowed the gap between the imaginations of the Tamil and the Indus Valley Civilisations (3,300 BCE to 1,300 BCE), the earliest known in the Indian subcontinent. This reconstruction of this ancient society evoked both linguistic and cultural pride, pushing Stalin to claim that the Tamil civilisation was rich, modern and developed, and juxtapose Tamil pride against the Hindi heartland. More importantly, it prompted some scholars and politicians to say that Tamils descended from the Indus Valley civilisation, and that the civilisation at Keeladi had little interaction with the so-called Vedic culture.

This has come at a time when right-wing ideologues have increasingly argued that it was the indigenous people of South Asia who developed the Indus Valley and Harappan civilisation and were “the Vedic people”. According to this school of thought, the genetic history of the Indians was neither discontinued nor broken, continued for 5,000 years, and is an ancient civilisation with perennial traditions.

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, in response to Stalin’s declaration, said that Tamil Nadu’s contributions reflect India’s innovation and unity.

“Recent archaeological findings in Tamil Nadu reveal the use of iron over 5,300 years ago, showcasing India’s early advancements in the Iron Age,” he said on X. “Tamil Nadu’s contributions, along with countless milestones across our nation, reflect India’s innovation and unity.”

“It’s a phenomenal discovery in archaeology. It means that the Iron Age in India is about 1500 years or more older than the Iron Age anywhere in the world,” Kurush Dalal, archaeologist and director of the School of Archaeology at Mumbai-based India Study Center Trust. “It’s a phenomenal discovery in archaeology. It means that the Iron Age in India is about 1500 years or more older than the Iron Age anywhere in the world.”

One of the most interesting things Dalal found in the report is a steel sword. “It’s beautiful and massive and the oldest steel sword that I’ve ever heard of. We need to talk more about that and the associated artefacts,” he said. They have recovered a large number of iron furnaces, not just burial and habitation sites. The data is in front of us now, we need to figure out what is happening in the Indian and global context.”

“North India has long treated south India like step children –– there has been this unnecessary north, south divide which has created all sorts of problems for all kinds of researchers. So, I understand where Stalin is coming from. But, to use archaeology like this is also not correct,” he said.