If you want to relate Mahabharatam as historical then you should link Gauravas as Kuravar and Pandavas as Pandiyar. Only when you take this prespective you can continue travel historical else you will remind in mythology. Yes this is a battle between Kuravar clans and Pandiyar clans in Dravida nadu. We should understand few realities then we can understand my point of view. Sanskirt scholars had practise of writting the historical events as mythology. To merge with the existing world they always change the names to existing world and merge with mythology. That's how the historical names gets into different form. All tamil names will get changed to mythological names. If you look at Mahabharatam as historical events then 2 references can be related and understood.
1. Thuthuveni, Newspaper rock utah.
When we see this rock painting and their culture and names you can relate them to Tamil and see a connection. But if you see from a mythological lens you will miss many. These clans call themselves as Hopi and their gods name is Kachana. We know the story of gopis and krishna. If Krishna is historical and they lived in a time where symbols were used to communicate then you can connect to Hopi clan where gopis as Hopi and Krishna as kanchana. And this is found in current central America and well protected. You can think why and how people would have traveled that long. is it possible? I will highlight a prespective that can create a belief in you to believe there is a possibility to reach there. So remember Krishna was a Dravida and he advocated not to offer prayers to Indra he had his own commanments which was little different to what was practised at his time.
2. Sembavalam, Heo Hwang Ok - Korean.
This is an event mentioned in Korean history that their king married a princess who came from India. They mention that she came from Ayuth Kingdom via sea. So when people were able to travel to Korean peninsula then they had enough technology to travel to any part of the world. Since this is very old people at that time whoever come from different land they consider them as god and worship them. Koreans of Kim clan consider her as God. I have shown many reference about the similarities between Tamil and Korean language. Since she was a queen she would have obviously influence over the clan than a normal person. Thats why you could see many word and meaning are similar between these languages.
When we can take history to back in 9500yrs old period. This geography and Kingdoms had different boundries and different languages. When you find the Dwaraka near Gujarat then you should understand that these dravida people were spreaded from Indus to equator region. There are mentioning of Kapatapuram in Ramayana where second Tamil sangam happened. And true historians read and locate the ancient lanka near Kapatapuram and not the current Srilanka(this is a mythology) There were period in history where River Thamaraprani flowed inside Srilanka there were no sea in between them. Lanka is just a measurement to locate the place in ancient times. Since this mythology was written in Sanskrit first it was related to their world names. Ancient India was very different than what we think. With Tamil we can travel back to historical period in ancient India but with Sankrit we can construct the mythology. So when you want to take a step to connect to ancient India then we need to read and learn about Tamil history.