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This is a very good question!

And was the zero discovered, or was it invented?

Either way, we know that the Romans didn't use a zero. Consequently counting and multiplying using Roman numerals is very difficult!

Most ancient cultures often counted by notches or marks, and they invariably start with '1' in some form. It is, and was, hard to think that there could be any number before 'one'!

ANCIENT BABYLONIANS: The ancient Babylonians knew that zero/nought/nil/nothing needed to be represented in their mathematics, so they did this by simply leaving a space in their calculations After all, a space is nothing!

However, that wasn't entirely satisfactory, because whilst it is true that a space may imply 'nothing', a zero is something, a symbol, which explicitly represents 'nothing'! In the first millennium BCE various methods were introduced to indicate the magnitude of the number beside it.

Just as we use '0' to make '1' ten times bigger than '1' (i.e. as '10'), the Babylonians used two wedge marks in their sexagesimal (base 60) system. But, due to the way it was used, this practice wasn't totally 'absolute' and was therefore not an entirely satisfactory way of representing the 'nil' concept.

ANCIENT MEXICANS (thousands of years BCE) used a symbol/pictograph for zero, but it wasn't a zero as we know it.

GREEK: About two thousand years ago Ptolemy used a small circle with a long overbar was used to represent zero. And it wasn't used in the same way that we sue zeros today. So the Greek zero was also not a zero as we know it!

India: Inscriptions on an Indian temple dated to 875 CE shows the first recorded use of the symbol '0'. We don't know who actually started to use this '0' form for zero, but at least we can say, "By the year 875, 'nothing' had arrived, at last!"

EGYPTIAN: It is also speculated that the Egyptians must have used zero for their massive construction projects, such as the pyramids and the sphinx.

* For more information about the History of Zero, see Related links below this box.

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βˆ™ 15y ago
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Q: Who discovered the zero the man who discovered it duh?
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