AA Edit | Debate over Tamil Nadu’s history is now cast in iron
By : AsianAge
Update: 2025-01-27 18:42 GMT
Debates over the antiquity of Tamil language, civilisation and culture have been raging for many decades in the academic and political worlds. While archaeologists from Tamil Nadu and Tamil literature enthusiasts had put forward the theory that Tamil civilisation predated that of many other ancient civilisations that historians had identified to the world and cited as evidence the glorious narrations in the Tamil Sangam literature, well known historians had shot it all down, saying that literary work cannot be cited as proof for lived history. They argued that literature could just be a figment of the author’s imagination and cannot stand scrutiny in the study of history.
But adamant Tamil historians insisted that there indeed was a thriving civilisation on the banks of the River Vaigai, which could not be pooh poohed after the excavations at Keeladi near Madurai threw up evidence of an urban settlement in the plains of River Vaigai. Since then the discourse on the antiquity of Tamil civilisation changed with many openly wondering if Keeladi could be older than Indus Valley civilisation. Some said that it indeed was and even voluminous books were written on the subject, not all by career archaeologists or anthropologists or historians alone but also by former bureaucrats.
Such books were even used to silence the naysayers refusing to agree that Tamil civilisation could be older than those identified in school history textbooks. But research continued at various fronts and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin came out with an announcement that the Iron Age started on Tamil soil, providing scientific evidence. He cited studies that have proved that iron had been found in the Tamil landscape 5,300 years ago, which is 1000 years before the time that it was earlier believed to be.
Now, the people of south India, particularly those in Tamil Nadu, could take pride in the fact that iron was smelted first in this part of the globe 5300 years ago, much before anybody else did it. Since the finding also establishes that the technology to smelter iron did not come from the West to India but had gone from here, it opens up new avenues for research. Did those ancient Tamils master skills in pyrotechnology, metallurgical sciences and furnace engineering to first separate iron from iron ore and then to harness the metal for human use? Answers for all these would probably be found in due course even as the search for the first iron furnace continues in the region.
Also it has opened avenues for anthropologists and other researchers to figure out the impact iron had on the life and lifestyle of the ancient society that did not have the use of the machines, gadgets, household appliances and war weapons for whose making iron is now used in a big way. To put it otherwise, what did the people do with iron then? That expands the scope of the research to the realm of sociology, too. Also it would have to be found as to how the technology transfer took place as other civilisations, as per contemporary history, had used iron before the people of south India. Till answers to these piquant questions are found, let’s bask in the glory of living where iron was born.