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==Why it Failed==
By 1300 BCE, Ugarit (Figure 2) was at the center of an increasingly widespread trade system that spanned the Mediterranean to Central Asia. Towns like Ugarit not only became wealthy but they were also influenced by many different cultures, as merchants from many part of the ancient world were going through the city. Canaanite populations had begun to spread the Proto-Sinaitic script, which is the alphabet that eventually influenced our own and most others, to other regions, although it likely did not go beyond the eastern Mediterranean regions of the Levant and Egypt. In effect, the Ugaritic alphabet at this time did have a good chance of influencing other scripts, and thus potentially influence our own alphabet, as Ugarit was highly influential. However, other Canaanite cities had likely begun to adopt the Proto-Sinaitic-based script (i.e., the emerging Canaanite alphabet) in the southern Levant to the south of Ugarit.<ref>For more on the Bronze alphabets, see: Healey, John F. 1990. <i>The Early Alphabet. Reading the Past.</i> London / Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications. John F. Healey.</ref>
The major event, however, that ended any possibility for the Ugaritic alphabet to influence our own was the Sea People disruptions that occurred by ca. 1200 BCE. We still do not exactly know what this series of events were and there may have been a number of related and unrelated events, but what we do know is that the great trade networks that were established began to be severely disrupted. Cities, such as Ugarit, were attacked and destroyed by people who almost resembled vikings, as they were seaborne raiders that attacked many of the wealth cities along the Levant. Major states at this time were either collapsing or retreated from parts of the Near East. This severe disruption created a major disruption not only to trade but also political and social life in the region for the next two hundred years. In effect, it created a dark age where we know relatively little what happened in the years from around 1200-1000 BCE. What we do know is that the Ugaritic alphabet seemed to have gone extinct by then as the city of Ugarit was destroyed. In a relatively sudden manner, a rival alphabetical script was extinguished.
