The History of Zero Versus nine Numbers

By JH Sayyar: Professional Astrologer

Zero History

Zero is a powerful number which brings great transformational change, sometimes occurring in a profound manner. It has much intensity, so caution is needed wherever it appears to ensure that extremes are not encountered.  Zero represents the Cosmic Egg, the primordial Androgyne – the Plenum. Zero as an empty circle depicts both the nothingness of death and yet the totality of life contained within the circle. As an ellipse the two sides represent ascent and descent, evolution and involution.

Before the One (meaning the Source–not the number) there is only Void, or non-being; thought; the ultimate mystery, the incomprehensible Absolute. Begins with meanings such as, Non-existence; nothingness; the unman fest; the unlimited; the eternal. The absence of all quality or quantity.

Zero Number

History of Zero

Middle East

By the mid 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonians had a sophisticated hexadecimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between hexadecimal numerals. By 300 BC a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating from perhaps as far back as 700 BC), the scribe Bel-ban-aplu wrote his zeroes with three hooks, rather

than two slanted wedges. The Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone. Thus numbers like 2 and 120 (2X60), 3 and 180 (3X60), 4 and 240 (4X60), et al., looked the same because the larger numbers lacked a final hexadecimal placeholder. Only context could differentiate them.

Greece

Ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number: they asked themselves “How can nothing be something?”, leading to interesting philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero. The ancient Greeks also questioned whether 1 was a number.

Early use of something like zero by the Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th-2nd century BC), implied at first glance by his use of binary numbers, is only the modern binary representation using 0 and 1 applied to Pingala’s binary system, which used short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code. Nevertheless, he and other Indian scholars at the time used the Sanskrit word sunya (the origin of the word zero after a series of transliterations and a literal translation) to refer to zero or void. Do you ever ‘see’ the Maya Numeric Codes?

One of my time travel archetypes is a vertical zipper opening into the void,
kind of like a rip in the fabric of time. It is linked to DNA, ladders, etc.

Evolution of our DNA

Mesoamerica

The Mesoamerican (Mayan) Long Count calendar developed in south-central Mexico required the use of zero as a place-holder within its vigesimal (base-20) positional numeral system. A shell glyph was used as a zero symbol for these Long Count dates, the earliest of which (on Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas) has a date of 36 BC. Since the eight earliest Long Count dates appear outside the Maya homeland, it is assumed that the use of zero in the Americas predated the Maya and was possibly the invention of the Olmecs.

The Olmecs are most important.

Indeed, many of the earliest Long Count dates were found within the Olmec heartland, although the fact that the Olmec civilization had come to an end by the 4th century BC, several centuries before the earliest known Long Count dates, argues against the zero being an Olmec discovery. Although zero became an integral part of Maya numerals, it of course did not influence Old World numeral systems.

Greece

By 130, Ptolemy, influenced by Hipparchus and the Babylonians, was using a symbol for zero (a small circle with a long overbar) within a sexagesimal numeral system otherwise using alphabetic Greek numerals. Because it was used alone, not just as a placeholder, this Hellenistic zero was perhaps the first documented use of a number zero in the Old World. However, the positions were usually limited to the cractional part of a number, called minutes, seconds, thirds, fourths, etc. They were not used the integral part of a number.

In later Byzantine manuscripts of his Syntaxis Mathematica (Almagest), the Hellenistic zero had morphed into the Greek letter omicron (otherwise meaning 70).

Rome

Another zero was used in tables alongside Roman numerals by 525 (first known use by Dionysius Exiguus), but as a word, nulla meaning nothing, not as a symbol. When division produced zero as a remainder, nihil, also meaning nothing, was used. These medieval zeros were used by all future medieval computists (calculators of Easter). An isolated use of their initial, N, was used in a table of Roman numerals by Bede or a colleague about 725, a zero symbol.

India

In 498 AD, Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata stated that “Sthanam sthanam dasa gunam” or place to place in ten times in value, which may be the origin of the modern decimal based place value notation.

The oldest known text to use zero is the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhaaga, dated 458 AD. however, it was first introduced to the world by Al Khawarizmim, a Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. He was the founder of several branches and basic concepts of mathematics. In the words of Phillip Hitti, Al Khawarizmi’s contribution to mathematics influenced mathematical thought to a greater extent. His work on algebra initiated the subject in a systematic form and also developed it to the extent of giving analytical solutions of linear and quadratic equations, which established him as the founder of Algebra. The very name Algebra has been derived from his famous book Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah.

His arithmetic synthesized Greek and Hindu knowledge and also contained his own contribution of fundamental importance to mathematics and science. Thus, he explained the use of zero, a numeral of fundamental importance developed by the Arabs. Similarly, he developed the decimal system so that the overall system of numerals, ‘algorithm’ or ‘algorizm’ is named after him.

The first indubitable appearance of a symbol for zero appears in 876 in India on a stone tablet in Gwalior. Documents on copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century AD, abound.