[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

I heard it said these folks invented "zero"?

My understanding is that it is documented that the Mayans developed (and used) the zero first. No other mathematical system developed and USED the zero prior to the Maya.

[Coop]

My understanding is that it is documented that the Mayans developed (and used) the zero first. No other mathematical system developed and USED the zero prior to the Maya.

Really? I was always under the impression that Al Gore invented the zero.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

"One might think that once a place-value number system came into existence then the 0 as a empty place indicator is a necessary idea, yet the Babylonians had a place-value number system without this feature for over 1000 years. Moreover there is absolutely no evidence that the Babylonians felt that there was any problem with the ambiguity which existed. Remarkably, original texts survive from the era of Babylonian mathematics. The Babylonians wrote on tablets of unbaked clay, using cuneiform writing. The symbols were pressed into soft clay tablets with the slanted edge of a stylus and so had a wedge-shaped appearance (and hence the name cuneiform). Many tablets from around 1700 BC survive and we can read the original texts. Of course their notation for numbers was quite different from ours (and not based on 10 but on 60) but to translate into our notation they would not distinguish between 2106 and 216 (the context would have to show which was intended). It was not until around 400 BC that the Babylonians put two wedge symbols into the place where we would put zero to indicate which was meant, 216 or 21 '' 6."