Adichanallur excavations point to a cosmopolitan Tamil country

While a radio carbon dating test ordered by the Madras High Court has established that the archaeological site at Adichanallur, in Tuticorin district of southern Tamil Nadu, goes back to 900 BC, the site reveals more than just the ancient history of Tamils as explained in part 1 of the article. Adichanallur provides crucial clues that could help settle at least some elements of the contentious, politically charged contemporary global debate around the origins of human civilization.

Adichanallur came into the limelight when quasi-scientific race theories held sway in Europe. It was a time when the idea of a master race conquering the whole world was gaining ground.

It was also the time European conquerors were hypothesizing that facial features and bone structures could explain cultural and behavior traits, and by extension civilisational superiority. For instance, “Caste and Tribes of Southern India”, an early 20th century anthropological work, tries to relate skeletal similarities among people with castes and, hence, behavior.

Adichanallur’s skeletal remains puzzled most “experts” at that time for they did not seem to correspond to that of the population of present southern India. Were the remains that of an ancient primitive tribe? A French neuroscientist thought so. He studied one skull and found it looked African, and decided that was indeed the case.

A British physical anthropologist, studying skeletal remains dug out by Alexander Rhea, thought one skull looked Mediterranean while another was probably Australoid, or even early Dravidian. This would mean an Australian aborigine had found his way to Adichanallur or the people of Adichanallur had at some point gone to Australia. A Mediterranean skull in Adichanallur would have buttressed beliefs, actually myths, that there was an early European race that was white and had its origins in the Mediterranean region. That race had conquered India, it was thought.

In the 1960s, two Indian Anthropological Survey of India experts studied the skeletal remains dug out by Rhea and decided they were similar to the remains found in Indus Valley civilization. This theory fits with the contemporary idea that the Indus Valley civilization was a proto-Dravidian, or early Dravidian, civilization. In other words, all of India was once practically Dravidian and Vedic Aryans came in later, probably through an invasion.

If you push Adichanallur back to another 500 to 750 years, you are at the Late Harappan period. So was Adichanallur a successor to Indus Valley? Metallurgical examination of the metallic artefacts found in the burial urns has suggested this, too, although other experts say it is best to go by radio carbon dating which has an error margin of just 10 years.

Adichanallur, however, has this habit of confounding theorists. The past rarely fits neatly with any contemporary, politically charged narrative, and Adichanallur is a stellar example of that.

In the 2000s, the ASI excavated Adichanallur once again. Some 170 burial urns were unearthed along with skeletal remains. Pathmanathan Raghavan, a forensic anthropologist, was passing by Chennai at that time. He was researching an Australian project that established that the contemporary Australian aborigines are descendants of out-of-Africa humans who had settled in India and had migrated along a largely land route to Australia. He studied the Adichanallur skeletal remains and concluded that the foreign-looking skeletal remains were not that of any proto-historic primitive tribe but that of foreigners. He proposed that the Adichanallur skeletons were that of Africans, Europeans, Chinese and Australian aborigines who had made Adichanallur their home.

Why did these foreigners come and settle deep inside Tamil country?

Raghavan found evidence that these foreigners were seafarers. They were merchant seamen who traded with Tamil country through Korkai, and suffered from ailments and diseases peculiar to seamen. He found evidence of these ailments in the skeletal remains. He recommends that future research in that area should not just be purely culture-related archaeology but also biological and physical anthropology. For instance, Raghavan believes that at the time of the Adichanallur settlement, the sea was four to five kilometers further into the land. He recommends a study of bio-fossils to construct a complete picture of the past.

So, Adichanallur was probably a foreigners’ colony – an area for foreign seafarers. This doesn’t mean the entire river settlement was foreign. It was most likely Tamil but the Tamils then not only traded but allowed foreigners to live or die there. It was a time of cosmopolitan Tamils.

History may not support identity politics

No growth happens in isolation. And ancient Tamils were compulsive traders, migrants and explorers. They loved mixing with others although they also fought brutal and destructive wars among themselves and probably with others.

Today’s scientists and anthropologists have given up on any significance of racial characteristics beyond bone structures. There is no evidence to believe differences in physical features have any relation whatsoever with behavior or culture.

The excavation in the 2000s showed three layers of remains. It is quite possible that there are layers deeper down, indicating an older settlement. It is therefore possible Adichanallur goes back to the Late Harappan period. But Dravidians themselves, today’s scholars believe, came from middle Asia and were likely not indigenous. Even those who say Indus Valley is proto-Dravidian warn against political theorizing for the sake of identity.

The truth of the matter is that no one really is indigenous to India. Africans were the first settlers, then came a wave of migrants who were pushed down south by another wave from the Steppes region, forming the ancestral south Indian and the ancestral north Indian with clear genetic differences. And history has shown that no genetic difference becomes homogeneous enough or significant enough. Humans migrate, mix and reproduce before that happens, thus keeping the species one.