The Meaning of Zero

I thought the articles were very interesting when they were talking about the number zero's origin. They both talked about the cultures creations of placeholders such as zero, but detailed that the exact origin of zero has not been pinpointed.

To me zero was not necessarily discovered by any one person. This is because the exact origin of zero cannot be pin pointed, and if a civilization was developed enough to have quantities larger than 99 or even occasionally 10, they would in fact need a number or place holder such as zero. Regardless, a person came up with the concept of zero, but we do not know who or where the original founder came from. For instance, the Chinese would use a symbol similar to the modern day 0 (zero) and the Romans had roman numerals such as X and C which represent the numbers 10 and 100. So, even though the Romans or Chinese were not necessarily using zero how we use it today, as a number, they were using a placeholder of sorts to represent it, and so were many other civilizations and cultures around the world.

Because of things like the Silk Roads, a major point of evolution in history, not only were things such as languages developed and dialects brought to other places as well as religious ideas and mechanisms, so was the idea of Zero.

While we may, as people of the world, have different ways for communication, different languages, and different government ideals, math cannot change per country. Math is the same everywhere, regardless of which symbols we use in place of numbers. Because of this, the world had to eventually come up with a common number for zero, or at least a way to define it. No matter where you go, formulas, operations, and expressions will be the same. Zero is the same way, even if it is represented differently the meaning is the same around the world, and without it things could not be computed which is why all cultures have had to accept it as a number.