How and when the new numeral symbols first entered Europe is not settled. In all likelihood they were carried by traders and travelers of the Mediterranean coast. They are found in a tenth-century Spanish manuscript and may have been introduced into spain by the Arabs who invaded the peninsula in 711 A.D.,,, to remain there for several hundred years. The completed system was more widely disseminated by a twelfth-century Latin translation of al-Khowarizm’s treatise and by subsequent European works on the subject