The Aramaic alphabet also emerged sometime between 1200 and 1000 BCE. As the Bronze Age collapsed, the Aramaeans moved into Canaan and Phoenician territories and adopted their scripts. Although early evidence of this writing is scarce, archeologists have uncovered a wide range of later Aramaic texts, written as early as the seventh century BCE. Due to its longevity and prevalence in the region, Achaemenid rulers would come to adopt it as a diplomatic language. The modern Aramaic alphabet rapidly spread east to the Kingdom of Nabataea, then to Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula, eventually making its way to Africa. Aramaean merchants carried older variations of Aramaic as far as India, where it later influenced the development of the Brahmi script. It also led to the developments of Arabic and Pahlavi (an Iranian adaptation), as well as for a range of alphabets used by early Turkish and Mongol tribes in Siberia, Mongolia and Turkestan. Literacy at this period spread with the merchant classes and may have grown to number 15-20% of the total population.