Changes

==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 and began developing the Canaanite alphabet, 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.

==Could it Have Been Different?==

If the Sea Peoples and the related disruptions did not occur, would it have been possible for the Ugaritic alphabet to become our own? Obviously we will never know but immediately before the collapse of Ugarit it was clear that this city was influential and important. The alphabet they invented did not seem to have spread very far, however, when the city was destroyed, which is likely why it went suddenly extinct. However, if the city survived, then it is possible that a cuneiform-based script may have spread. Nevertheless, we should also consider that the script was essentially made to be written in clay, where the wedges are created because of using a stylus on clay. Thus, it is possible that even if the cuneiform-based alphabet survived, then it would have had to evolve to make it more amenable to other writing systems and tools that later developed. Specifically, parchment and later paper would have possibly made the cuneiform symbols not as easy to write.