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In the beginning there was ZERO and it was null

In the beginning there was ZERO and it was null. The origin of zero. Prehistoric man did count. Whether with marks on the cave wall or grooves on a stick. He counted the seasons, the number of deer killed in the last hunt, and the members of his tribe. He had no need to count zero mammoths.

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In the beginning there was ZERO and it was null

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  1. In the beginning there was ZERO and it was null The origin of zero

  2. Prehistoric man did count. Whether with marks on the cave wall or grooves on a stick. He counted the seasons, the number of deer killed in the last hunt, and the members of his tribe. He had no need to count zero mammoths

  3. The Siriona Indians of Bolivia use the word many for anything larger than 3.The Bacari and Bororo use what amounts to a base two number system, counting “1,2”, “1,2”.

  4. But because nature saw fit to give us five fingers on each hand, most ancient peoples used a base five counting system. It is probably because of the fact that we have ten fingers total that led to our use of a base ten counting system.

  5. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all used different symbols for different numbers. These symbols were grouped together to form larger numbers. The arrangement was not important, the meaning was the same. Zero had no value and was not necessary to these cultures.

  6. It was the Babylonians who first introduced a symbol for zero. They used a base sixty counting system, which they calculated with another of their inventions, the abacus. But because the symbol for 60 and the symbol for 3600 were the same, their written numbers needed a symbol to show their placement on the abacus. So zero was born in the symbol

  7. So, 64 was written And 3604 was written with the zero top: 64 (1 sixty + 4 ones)ottom: 3604 (1 sixty2 + 0 sixty + 4 ones)

  8. At this point the only purpose of zero was as a placeholder, very much the way we use it today to distinguish 11 from 101.

  9. The Ancient Mayans also used zero as a placeholder for their base twenty numeration. Unlike the Babylonians, zero had a numerical value of its own and they began counting with zero.

  10. Nearly every culture has a creation myth or story, and most begin with an empty void and churning chaos. This concept was frightening to the western mind, so while the idea of zero spread and was used throughout the east, it was resisted and even called evil in the west. And what would have been its purpose anyway. You can add 0+0 but you still have 0.

  11. There were many great Greek mathematicians, but all rejected both the theory of the infinite and the void on religious grounds. Aristotle declared that each of the planets is imbedded in its own clear orb revolving in succession around the central planet earth, each spherical crystal turning the one before. The final orb was a dark blue crystal imbedded with the stars. The entire universe was contained within this system. The fact the last orb too turned Aristotle said was proof of God’s existence. There was no void.

  12. When Christianity began to make its way through Europe Aristotle’s theory spread with it and was embraced by the church.

  13. During the middle ages there were very few literates, other than the Christian monks. The Church being based in Rome, used both the Roman calendar and Roman numerals which have no zero. The Church saw God as representing all things and to speak of null and void was heresy.

  14. In India where it is believed that all creation came from the void, and the goal of the soul is to return to the void and the creator, the concept of null was easily accepted.

  15. So, when Alexander the Great brought the Babylonian idea of zero as a place holder it was accepted and taken one step further. They used a base ten number system and assigned zero a numerical value. The numerical system we use today evolved from this system. This acceptance of the number zero allowed the Indian mathametians to develop another new concept, ”the negative number”. If zero had a numerical vale then you could have less than zero, as in 2-3=-1.

  16. In the seventh century AD the Arabic Empire began its conquest, spreading from Egypt, Syria, Persia and Jerusalem, to the Indus River in the east and the Algiers in the West. By the middle of the eighth century they were in control of Spain and India and China, absorbing the wisdom of the people they conquered along with the Indian numerical system.

  17. In the twelfth century, Maimonides, a Jewish mathematician and Rabbi living in a Spain under Muslin rule declared that Aristotle was wrong. For Aristotle the universe had always existed. Maimonides said this contradicted the Bible, which stated that God created the world out a void. Now Zero became acceptable to Jewish scholars as well.

  18. The final resistance to zero was broken during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Peasants, noblemen, monks, and even children went off to fight the infidels. Many never to return, but those who did brought with them Eastern ideas, as well as silks and leprosy. In 1277 Tempier, a bishop in Paris, declared that to say that God could not create from a void was to say that God was not all powerful. Zero was beginning to gain acceptance in the west.

  19. Fibonacci, an Italian educated in North Africa, learned Arabic mathematics and introduced them to the western world in his book, “Liber Abaci”, published in 1202. Italian bankers and merchants found Arabic numbers and calculation so much easier than previous methods that they accepted it and zero immediately.

  20. The government and Church still resisted this change and in 1299 Florence outlawed the use of Arabic numerals on the grounds that the numbers were too easily altered. Businessmen continued to use them, even using them to send code messages. Now zero and Arabic numerals were an accepted form of calculation .

  21. Credits www.kyrene.k12.az.us/.../sunda/ma/monk.gif www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=001653D-B8ED-1C71-9EB7809EC588F207 http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000A41D6-B959-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7 http://oregonstate.edu/~peterseb/misc/sonja_dots.html http://www.mathmojo.com/interestinglessons/originofzero/originofzero.html http://www.eyelid.co.uk/numbers.htm “zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea” by Charles Siefe http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://mr_sedivy.tripod.com/ap/dante_tall.jpg&imgrefurl=http://mr_sedivy.tripod.com/med_hist8.html&h=275&w=176&sz=12&tbnid=JCtA_fazLycJ:&tbnh=109&tbnw=69&hl=en&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmedieval%2BItalian%2Bmerchants%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.muslimheritage.com/uploads/cordoba.gif&imgrefurl=http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm%3FArticleID%3D355&h=240&w=200&sz=39&tbnid=1TYc4Y5ASjEJ:&tbnh=104&tbnw=86&hl=en&start=17&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMuslim%2BSpain%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

  22. Credits http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~gwang/vishnu3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~gwang/IndiaImages.htm&h=390&w=297&sz=27&tbnid=tLH75ghGNEUJ:&tbnh=120&tbnw=91&hl=en&start=176&prev=/images%3Fq%3DIndian%2BGods%26start%3D160%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN http://www.saxakali.com/historymam2.htm http://www.mediatinker.com/blog/archives/008821.html http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/ http://www.wga.hu/tours/sistina/index1.html http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.kyrene.k12.az.us/schools/brisas/sunda/ma/monk.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.kyrene.k12.az.us/schools/brisas/sunda/ma/1xiao.htm&h=192&w=216&sz=37&tbnid=IGWEjC6Zl_EJ:&tbnh=89&tbnw=101&hl=en&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmedieval%2Bmonks%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

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