The Origin of the Number Zero

Smithsonian Magazine ^ | December 2014 | Amir Aczel

[SunkenCiv]

Of all the numerals, "0" -- alone in green on the roulette wheel -- is most significant. Unique in representing absolute nothingness, its role as a placeholder gives our number system its power. It enables the numerals to cycle, acquiring different meanings in different locations (compare 3,000,000 and 30). With the exception of the Mayan system, whose zero glyph never left the Americas, ours is the only one known to have a numeral for zero. Babylonians had a mark for nothingness, say some accounts, but treated it primarily as punctuation. Romans and Egyptians had no such numeral either...

Found on a stone stele, it was documented in 1931 by a French scholar named George Coedes. Assigned the identifying label K-127, the inscription reads like a bill of sale and includes references to slaves, five pairs of oxen and sacks of white rice. Though some of the writing wasn't deciphered, the inscription clearly bore the date 605 in an ancient calendar that began in the year A.D. 78. Its date was thus A.D. 683. Two centuries older than the one at Gwalior, it predated wide-ranging Arab trade. But K-127 disappeared during the Khmer Rouge's rule of terror, when more than 10,000 artifacts were deliberately destroyed...

The majority view is that numbers exist outside of the human mind. Unlike Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, they don't require a human creator. What gave numbers their power was the very act of naming them and writing them down. I'm now working with Cambodian officials to move K-127 to a museum in Phnom Penh, where a wide audience can appreciate the incredible discovery it represents.

[eleni121]

Job 38:4 “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.”