What happens in Ugarit stays in Ugarit

I always thought we were the apex of civilization in the 21st-century United States. I naively thought Western democracies had evolved, through the twists and turns of preceding civilizations, to a pinnacle of stability and literacy and a sophisticated lifestyle. 

Well, I was wrong. Not only is our much-vaunted country susceptible to pandemics that kill more than one million Americans and to supply chain disruptions that cause scarcities and inflation – but we are not the first civilization that thought we had reached the Golden Ratio of good governance, intricate trade, and a political balance that ensured peace.

Not to be overly dramatic, but there appears to be a cycle of sophisticated civilizations that riss and then fall. We all know about the Roman Empire. Turns out there were even earlier multicultural civilizations that came before. For example, the ancient mecca of trade along the Mediterranean Sea, the once-flourishing city of Ugarit.

Perhaps you have never heard of Ugarit?  Me neither, not till I read a book called “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed” by Eric H. Cline. Archaeologists have dug up the ruins of this early version of New York City. Around1500 BCE, it was the trading mecca for the entire Mediterranean basin. Ugarit had it all: writing and scribes, kings, navies, armies, palaces, luxury goods, nice houses. There were many cultures and languages as well, similar to the modern melting pot of New York City.

“All Good Things come to an End” could be the other title for the book. Ugarit thrived for four hundred years.  Then, around 1200 BCE, the “Sea Peoples” attacked. These were an amalgam of tribes that came from the north and attacked the walled cities of the Mediterranean basin and the Tigris-Euphrates valley. These attacks spelled the end of the Hittites, the Ugaritic city-state, and the Sumerian empire. And so weakened the Pharaohs that Egyptian power was limited for another two hundred years.

With the loss of the Hittites and the weakening of the Egyptian and Tigris Euphrates strongholds, the trade routes that supplied grain and wine ended. With the destruction of Cyprus, no more copper arrived. With the destruction of Crete, no more lovely Minoan artifacts. With the loss of Ugarit, a key trading hub was lost. The supply chain for these goods was decimated.

In addition, the overland caravans that had brought tin from Afghanistan to Ugarit, for further distribution to the rest of the Mediterranean world, stopped coming.  Tin was an essential metal at the time, along with copper. Mix the two metals together and you get bronze. Armies depended on bronze weaponry, and chariots depended on bronze components.

A century or two of dark ages descended on the Near East. Small city-states arose in Palestine and elsewhere. They filled the power vacuum left by the defeated Egyptians who had previously ruled Palestine, which led to the ability of the Israelites to enter the land and establish themselves there.  

We only know about Ugarit and this loss of a globalized economy because of the clay tablets left behind. In the ruins of their burnt city, archaeologists found thousands of cuneiform tablets. The inscriptions were in a West Semitic language, using an early alphabet.  The language was easily translated because it is basically Hebrew. The Israelites and Ugarits and Canaanites all spoke dialects of the same language and had much in common, in terms of stories and belief systems.

Until these tablets were found and translated, we knew nothing about Ugarit despite its rich civilization which lasted for centuries.

The bottom line? We are again living through a time of international trade and complicated supply chains.  Anything can disrupt a supply chain. A pandemic, as we have seen with COVID-19. A war, as we are seeing in Ukraine.

During the times of the Bronze Age collapse, the invaders were likely Europeans fleeing whatever disaster they faced – climate change, drought, volcanic clouds blocking the sun. Who knows?  Some probably came from Sardinia, now a region in Italy, as well.

Beware social instability. And Europeans and Sardinians with fierce visages and serious weaponry.