Discovery of the Oldest Iron in the World in
Tamilnadu: What Does it Prove or Disprove?
Historians, and archaeologists, and in fact all people interested in the history of India, have been electrified by recent media reports that the oldest iron objects in the world have been discovered in Tamilnadu.
There are numerous press reports on the subject. Just a few of them:
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/tamil-nadu-iron-age-new-study-importance-9797046/
“In an announcement that challenges
long-held assumptions about the origins of the Iron Age, a new study has found
evidence that the use of iron in the area that is now Tamil Nadu dates back to
the first quarter of the 4th millennium BCE. This revelation, based on rigorous
radiometric dating from multiple international laboratories, positions the
region as a pioneering hub of early metallurgy, surpassing global timelines by nearly
two millennia.”
“A groundbreaking study has revealed that the Iron Age may have begun in present-day Tamil Nadu as early as 3,345 BCE, challenging previous historical assumptions by pushing back the timeline of iron usage in the region by over a millennium.”
“Chennai: Carbon dating of artefacts unearthed from recent archaeological excavations in Tamil Nadu have established that use of iron was widespread in the state and dates back to at least 5,300 years ago, making it the oldest date for Iron Age in India”
Note that two of the above call this the oldest iron discovered “in the region” and “in India”, while one of them clearly writes: “This revelation, based on rigorous radiometric dating from multiple international laboratories, positions the region as a pioneering hub of early metallurgy, surpassing global timelines by nearly two millennia.” And clearly, this last is the actual truth.
Even the Economic Times report which only speaks here about it “pushing back the timeline of iron usage in the region by over a millennium”, almost immediately specifies that the actual dates of these iron objects “establish Tamil Nadu as the site of the earliest known Iron Age civilization, making it potentially the oldest in the world.”
The
actual dates are “as early
as 3,345 BCE”.
Compare this with what the Wikipedia article on “Iron Age” has to say:
“The earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük in modern-day Turkey, dated to 2200–2000 BC. Akanuma (2008) concludes that "The combination of carbon dating, archaeological context, and archaeometallurgical examination indicates that it is likely that the use of ironware made of steel had already begun in the third millennium BC in Central Anatolia".[13] Souckova-Siegolová (2001) shows that iron implements were made in Central Anatolia in very limited quantities about 1800 BC and were in general use by elites, though not by commoners, during the New Hittite Empire (≈1400–1200 BC).[14]
Similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron-working in the Ganges Valley in India have been dated tentatively to 1800 BC. Tewari (2003) concludes that "knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artifacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC".[15] By the Middle Bronze Age increasing numbers of smelted iron objects (distinguishable from meteoric iron by the lack of nickel in the product) appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia.”
In short, before this, the “earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük in modern-day Turkey, dated to 2200–2000 BC.” But these findings in Tamilnadu date to “as early as 3,345 BCE”.
This
is one of the greatest discoveries from numerous scientific and historical
points of view.
It again points to India as one of the greatest pioneers, if not the
greatest, in almost every aspect of human civilization and culture.
But beyond this, what does it prove about major and much debated “controversial” Indian historical issues?
Let me just quote from the Economic Times article above to put it in a nutshell:
“The discovery suggests that a contemporary Iron Age civilization existed in southern India at the same time as the Indus Valley Civilization in northern and northwestern India.
[…] Rajan, one of the co-authors of the report, explained, "The recent radiocarbon dates indicate that when the Indus Valley experienced the Copper Age, south India was already in the Iron Age. In this sense, the Iron Age of south India and the Copper Age of the Indus were contemporary."
Rakesh Tewari, former Director General of the
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), called the Sivagalai findings a
"turning point" in Indian archaeology. "For a long time, it
seemed that when the Indus Valley was flourishing in the western part of the
country, other areas did not have contemporary cultures. But now, things are
changing," he said.”
And this is the crux of the whole matter.
Indian history has been extremely politicized, and everyone draws all kinds of conclusions about India’s internal history from all kinds of facts and new discoveries: note the conclusion of the CM of Tamilnadu, as per the Economic Times report: “"We have scientifically established that iron was introduced 5,300 years ago in the Tamil landscape. The Iron Age began from Tamil land," Stalin stated on Thursday”. So far he is absolutely right.
But then he goes on to link this with the Harappan civilization and Harappan script. Many people claim that inscriptions found in Tamilnadu have Harappan signs on them. From this they conclude that the Harappan civilization was linguistically a Dravidian one. But have the “Harappan” signs in Tamilnadu been conclusively deciphered revealing a Dravidian language? If they have, then it should be a few logical steps backwards to conclusively decipher the Harappan inscriptions in the northwest as well, but no-one reports that this has been conclusively deciphered. If they have not, it can still be logically claimed that the “Harappan” signs in Tamilnadu represent a Dravidian language, but this does not automatically lead back to the conclusion that the language of the Harappan cities was also Dravidian: after all, in later times, different varieties of the Brahmi alphabet were later used all over India to write different languages (both “Aryan” and Dravidian).
But this new discovery (and the very logical conclusion drawn from it by both Prof Rajan and Rakesh Tewari) in fact completely disproves the claims of all those people whether scholars or politicians, whether historians or geneticists, whether supporters of the AIT or the OIT, and whether interpreters of the Harappan language as being “Aryan” or as being Dravidian”, who, whatever their different opinions on every other point, are unanimous in declaring that the Harappan civilization was the fountain-head of all of Indian culture, and that all Indians have the Harappans as their “ancestors”. And, if the CM of Tamilnadu puts forward the claim that (before the “arrival” of “Aryans”) the whole of India, i.e. both the South and the Northwest shared a common identity and culture, the discovery completely disproves his claims as well. The culture of the Northwest and the culture of the South, were distinctly different from each other during the period of the Harappan civilization.
What does it prove
then? It proves what I have
been saying from my first book: India is a mini-representative of the world:
it has the widest range and variety of topography and climate, of flora
and fauna, and of culture (every branch of culture): it cannot and should
not be reduced to a single-source entity.
In my first book (1993):
“The oldest
Dravidian traditions speak of ancient prehistoric kingdoms in the South itself,
extending, in fact, even further south into a land now sunk under the seas.
There is no trace of Dravidian place-names in the Indus region even in the very
ancient past. "Excavation in the South has hitherto revealed no trace of
the Indus Valley Civilization." There is no Dravidian tradition of any
conflict with the speakers of Indo-European languages in ancient times. That
Tamil has the names Vaḍamozhi (northern language) for Sanskrit and Tēnmozhi
(southern language) for ancient Tamil is also significant”.
I have throughout all my books and articles in the last thirty years been strongly reiterating that the Vedic/Harappan cultural area of the Northwest of India is just one branch of the great banyan tree that we call Hindu civilization, and that it is not the root of the religion, culture and civilization of the whole of India, which had its own rich cultural traditions which formed other branches of this single banyan tree: in particular the eastern Gangetic areas and the South, which had rich and independent traditional cultures of their own.
In the context of the discoveries from the exacavations at Keezhadi, I had pointed out in an article published in Swarajya on 4th April 2017 that independent civilizations (independent of the Harappan civilization) existed in the eastern Gangetic areas and the South, and if they had not been discovered and identified yet, it was, among other things, mainly because archaeologists and scholars were determined that any civilization could only be of the Harappan type (with its great cities, international trade and inscribed seals), and I have repeatedly pointed out that there were civilizations of other types. As I do not claim to be an Indian Nostradamus, I could not have identified then what would be the unique identifying features of these other branches of our civilizational banyan tree (though that unique identifying feature now turns out to be iron technology!):
To be specific, I wrote (on
the attempts to link the Keezhadi site with the Harappan civilization)
as follows:
“The only difference between the official paradigm of the western (and corresponding Indian) academic scholars and the paradigm of those who reject the AIT is that the latter reject the external origin of the Vedic language and its speakers. Otherwise both see the story of Indian Civilization as a linear story commencing with the Vedic age.
The idea that the Dravidians of the South represent the descendants of the original IVC people driven to the South, or their kindred, is a leftist sideshow adopted by the so-called "Dravidian movement" in Tamilnadu (and its academic supporters in India and the west), and not necessarily a part of the official AIT. But anything which seems to challenge the linear story tends to make "Hindutva groups" "uncomfortable": whether the idea that the Vedic language is not the ultimate ancestral "Aryan" language, or the idea that Dravidian languages and Indo-European languages belong to different language families - and now, apparently, the discovery of Keezhadi (even when it represents a late date in the Sangam period, around 200 BCE, and has nothing really to do with the IVC).
The fact is that this linear story is itself wrong, and totally out of line with the facts and with Indian historical traditions recorded in the Puranas. And until this is officially understood and accepted by the alleged "Hindutva groups" (as well as by their opponents), the politics of both sides will continue to play havoc with Indian historical studies.
The truth is that the Vedic civilization commencing with the Rigveda is not a civilization or culture brought in by "Aryan invaders" in 1500 BCE (as alleged by the AIT proponents). And nor is it an ancient primordial civilization (as alleged by "Hindutva groups") which represents the ancestral starting point of Indian Civilization as a whole. It is one of many branches (although the oldest and most detailedly recorded and most widely spread one) of the magnificent banyan tree that we call Indian or Hindu Civilization: it is the Civilization or culture of the Pūrus, one of the many native tribes of ancient India. For the detailed and unchallengeable evidence, see my books or my following blog "Who were the Vedic Aryans?":
http://talageri.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european.html
According to the
Puranas (which contain core historical details heavily interspersed with myths,
cosmology, philosophy and religion), the different parts of ancient-most historical
India were ruled by the ten sons of the mythical Manu Vaivasvata (or inhabited
by the descendant tribes of these ten mythical sons). Of these, the texts only
really give details about the descendants of two of these sons: the Ikṣvākus
(the "Solar Race") who inhabited eastern U.P and Bihar, and the Aiḷas
or Saudyumnas (the "Lunar
Race") who are divided into five main groups: the Pūrus (in the Central
area in Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh), the Druhyus (to their west, in
the Greater Punjab or present-day northern Pakistan, but later driven out
westwards and northwards by the southward movement of ) the Anus (to the north,
in Kashmir and the western Himalayas, but later expanding southwards into the
Greater Punjab and driving out the Druhyus westwards and northwards), the Yadus
(to the southwest, in Rajasthan western Madhya Pradesh and areas to their
south), and the Turvasus (to the southeast, i.e. to the east of the Yadu-s).
As per the accounts in the Puranas, at the same time as the Pūru (actually the Vedic) civilization and culture was flourishing in the Haryana-western UP area, there were kingdoms and civilized tribes (obviously with different kinds of civilizations and cultures) flourishing in different parts of India. The cultural and civilizational picture always becomes clear when a culture or civilization described in texts is complemented and corroborated by archaeological finds fitting the space-time aspects of that culture or civilization: this is the case in respect of other ancient civilizations outside India. As I have conclusively demonstrated in my blog "The Chronology and Geography of the Rigveda" referred to earlier, the "Indus Valley"/"Harapan"/ "Sindhu-Sarasvati" civilization is proved by a study of the Mitanni records of Syria/Iraq, the Avesta, and the New Books of the Rigveda, to be the "Indo-Iranian" culture described by the common data in those texts: a joint culture of the (Vedic "Indo-Aryan") Pūrus and the (pre-Zarathushtrian proto-Iranian) Anus of Puranic records. The recent find in Keezhadi is naturally the archaeological testimony to the Sangam-era Tamil culture described in the Sangam texts. This is admittedly of a much later date (post 400 BCE), but there is always the strong possibility that diligent archaeological excavations in Tamil Nadu in future may throw up evidence of the much older ancient Tamil civilization of Tamil traditions: stretching from Tamil Nadu further south into the sea (into areas which are believed to have submerged into the sea), different from but as old as the Harappan civilization. Certainly, many recent excavations in eastern UP and Bihar have exposed sites as old as the Harappan sites, or older, with (obviously) cultural and civilizational features not exactly identical or even similar to those of the Harappan sites. But our Puranic accounts do tell us that there were different kingdoms and cultures at the same time all over India. The eastern sites undoubtedly represent the Ikṣvāku cultural and civilizational areas, and any sites equally ancient discovered and excavated in future in eastern and far southern parts of India will represent the cultural and civilizational areas of the people classified in the Puranas as descendants of some other of the "ten sons of Manu".”
I did not expect that such
a discovery (I am assuming that all these reports turn out to be accurate)
would take place in my lifetime. It is thrilling indeed. It not only proves once more the greatness of our Hindu/Indian
civilization which (at least as of now as per these reports) introduced the
Iron Age in the world, but also shows again that our Hindu/Indian civilization is a great and spreading banyan tree which represents through its
different branches, World Culture in microcosm.
Will the east (the eastern Gangetic Valley of the Ikṣvākus) yield equally thrilling evidence of India’s third great branch of Hindu civilization? I hope and pray it does, and, again, I hope it happens within my own lifetime.
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