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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.

Experts say the excavations in Tamil Nadu are significant and could reshape our understanding of the Iron Age and iron smelting in the Indian subcontinent.

They involve thousands of workers from China, South East Asia, Africa and the Indian subcontinent kept in walled-off compounds where they defraud people all over the world of their savings.

"Fonseca wanted to situate Christianity - which has largely been viewed as a western religious tradition - within the Indian subcontinent. It was from this angst that his watercolours painted Christianity anew," Rinald D'Souza, director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa, told the BBC.

The studies included people with different diseases, and most were from the Middle East and/or the Indian subcontinent.