For over 20 years, archaeologists in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu have been unearthing clues to the region's ancient past.

Their digs have uncovered early scripts that rewrite literacy timelines, mapped maritime trade routes connecting India to the world and revealed advanced urban settlements - reinforcing the state's role as a cradle of early civilisation and global commerce.

Now they've also uncovered something even older - evidence of what could be the earliest making and use of iron. Present-day Turkey is one of the earliest known regions where iron was mined, extracted and forged on a significant scale around the 13th Century BC.

Archaeologists have discovered iron objects at six sites in Tamil Nadu, dating back to 2,953–3,345 BCE, or between 5,000 to 5,400 years old. This suggests that the process of extracting, smelting, forging and shaping iron to create tools, weapons and other objects may have developed independently in the Indian subcontinent.

"The discovery is of such a great importance that it will take some more time before its implications sink in," says Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti, a professor of South Asian archaeology at Cambridge University.

The latest findings from Adichchanallur, Sivagalai, Mayiladumparai, Kilnamandi, Mangadu and Thelunganur sites have made local headlines such as "Did the Iron Age Begin in Tamil Nadu?"........

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