an iron age working culture that predates the copper and bronze age of all the other places on earth? and in a region that traditionally received people and technology and farming from the north and specifically the indus river valley?
there will have to be a lot more discoveries like this and by a few non Indian teams for this story to gain currency.
One thing that can be said about this story is that it fits in nicely with the current hindu nationalist orthodoxy.
Yeah, all the sources I found in English were Indian. In addition, I’m not a supporter of the just-so “must have used stone, then copper, then bronze, then iron, just because” model, mainly because it doesn’t correspond to any actual dates. In the Americas, *some* Precolumbian cultures were still in the bronze age, AFAIK none had figured out iron, armor was made out of cotton, and some groups hadn’t even figured out ceramics, relying instead on gourds and whatnot.
Due to the superiority of iron over bronze why did the technology not spread to the rest of India and beyond. I have my doubts.
A completely wrong take. This was found/reported in the one place in the south of India where they would like to believe that they are different. Certainly unconnected to "Hindu nationalist orthodoxy", whatever that means. Entirely possible that this claim is an overreach but if it was, it would be for the opposite reasons stated by you.