Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze and proto-writing, and other features of urban civilization.
The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies. An ancient civilization can be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in western Asia before the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, but in some parts of the world, the Copper Age served as a transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic from outside the region except for Sub-Saharan Africa where it was developed independently.
Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Egypt (hieroglyphs), the Near East (cuneiform), China (oracle bone script)—and the Mediterranean, with the Mycenaean culture (Linear B)—had viable writing systems.
The Bronze Age in South Asia begins around 3000 BC, and in the end gives rise to the Indus Valley Civilization, which had its (mature period) between 2600 BC and 1900 BC. It continues into the Rigvedic period, the early part of the Vedic period. It is succeeded by the Iron Age in India, beginning in around 1000 BC.
South India, by contrast, remains in the Mesolithic stage until about 2500 BC. In the 2nd millennium BC, there may have been cultural contact between North and South India, even though South India skips a Bronze Age proper and enters the Iron Age from the Chalcolithic stage directly. In February, 2006, a school teacher in the village of Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu discovered a stone celt with an inscription estimated to be up to 3,500 years old.Indian epigrahist Iravatham Mahadevan postulated that the writing was in Indus script and called the find "the greatest archaeological discovery of a century in Tamil Nadu".Based on this evidence he goes on to suggest that the language used in the Indus Valley was of Dravidian Origin. However, the absence of Bronze Age in South India, whereas the knowledge of the Bronze making techniques in the Indus Valley cultures questions the validity of this hypothesis.

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