News Archaeology

Complex supply chains may have appeared more than 3,000 years ago

Evidence hints miners in Central Asia provided a crucial metal to Mediterranean rulers

An underwater photo of a replica sunken merchant ship with a scuba diver swimming above.

Analyses of tin ingots found aboard a merchant ship that sank off Turkey’s coast around 3,300 years ago suggest that sophisticated supply chains of the metal ran from Central Asia and part of Turkey to the Mediterranean. A replica of the vessel is shown.

WaterFrame/Alamy Stock Photo

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Long-distance supply chains, vulnerable to disruptions from wars and disease outbreaks, may have formed millennia before anyone today gasped at gas prices or gawked at empty store shelves.