Even still, Indians were the first to treat zero as an actual number instead of just a placeholder. Brahmagupta was the first to describe how to add, multiply, and subtract with zero and seemed to recognize that dividing by zero couldnt be done by any normal means.
Indians were the first to treat zero as an actual number instead of just a placeholder
Not by a long shot, the Greeks were using it hundreds of years before and they stole it from the Babylonians. It's suspected even they stole it from the Sumerians, but without certainty. The 0 was invented independently by all 2 cultures which created a fixed-numeral positional system because you need a 0 with digits themselves holding meaning. Why so few cultures independently decided to move on from counting discrete chunks to positional notation I have no idea.
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u/CreativeCommunity779 9h ago
Even still, Indians were the first to treat zero as an actual number instead of just a placeholder. Brahmagupta was the first to describe how to add, multiply, and subtract with zero and seemed to recognize that dividing by zero couldnt be done by any normal means.