Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin on Thursday claimed that the “iron age” began in southern India 5,300 years ago, contesting accumulated archaeological evidence indicating that iron smelting emerged at multiple sites across the world between 3,000 and 3,800 years ago.

“With immense pride and unmatched satisfaction, I have declared to the world: The iron age began on Tamil soil,” Stalin said in a post on X.

“…The use of iron in Tamil Nadu dates back to the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE, establishing that iron usage was prominent in south India over 5,300 years ago.”

Stalin also posted documents outlining the results of scientific dating studies on five samples of clay urns excavated from an iron-age burial site near Sivagalai village in Tuticorin district that suggest they are between 3,300 and 4,500 years old.

“These are provisional dates, studies are still under way,” P. Morthekai, a physicist at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow, who led a BSIP team involved in the urn analysis, told The Telegraph on Thursday.

The Sivagalai site was a burial area and some of the urns there contained iron implements such as axes, sickles and daggers, R. Sivanantham, joint director in the Tamil Nadu archaeology department, told this newspaper. The dates of the urns suggest that iron implements were in use at the time.

The state archaeology department also sent charcoal samples from some urns to an independent laboratory in Miami, Florida, for radiocarbon dating. One sample was dated to be between 5,320 years and 5,460 years old. The archaeological and dating studies are yet to be peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal.

Archaeological excavations over the decades have suggested that the iron age began independently at different times in various regions. Excavations in West Asia have yielded evidence of iron smelting 3,200 years ago.

The earliest iron artefacts on the Indian subcontinent appeared in the Gangetic plains around 3,800 years ago, while the early iron age in Europe is dated to 2,800 years ago, a period marked by the widespread adoption of iron metallurgy.

Stalin also released the results of independent dating analysis by scientists at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, which suggest that two more Sivagalai urns are 4,400 and 4,500 years old.

But research by archaeologists at the University College London 12 years ago suggested that ancient Egyptians had also mastered the art of working with iron, albeit extraterrestrial meteoritic iron.

Their work on iron beads excavated in 1911 from a site called el-Gerzeh in Egypt indicated that metalworkers 5,000 years ago were manipulating — smithing and rolling — meteoritic iron, an iron-nickel alloy much harder and more brittle than the more common copper, developing techniques that led to the iron age. The University College London team published its findings in the Journal of Archaeology.

Stalin on Thursday associated the discoveries in Sivagalai to the ancient Dravidian civilisation, believed to be among the earliest inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, associated with the advanced Indus Valley Civilisation and predating the arrival of the Aryans, who later influenced the region’s cultural and linguistic landscape.

“What was written in our ancient literature is now becoming scientifically proven history, thanks to the meticulous efforts of our Dravidian model government,” Stalin wrote on X.

His post prompted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to also post on X: “Tamil Nadu’s contributions, along with countless milestones across our nation, reflect India’s innovation and unity.”