Was watching Engineering an Empire on the history channel and the episode was covering the Mayan empire.
They were talking about how the Mayan empire “created” (don’t remember the exact wording used) the concept of zero. Which aided them in the designing and building of their structures and temples. And due to them knowing the concept of zero they were much more advanced than European empires/civilizations. If that’s true then how were much older civilizations able to build the structures they did without the concept of zero?
In: 395
The concept of zero is complicated – it was independently conceived by multiple different cultures/empires/societies over time – the Mayan empire didn’t *invent* it anymore than they invented holding sticks or eating cooked food
Zero meaning *nothing* has existed as long as people/animals have been counting things (a monkey or dolphin can understand the concepts of something and nothing for example, they know when there is no food and when there is some amount of food, this doesn’t mean they know the definition of 0 as we would)
zero as a mathematical concept (‘0’) however is more complex, as a base to start buildings has been used in ancient Egypt (the hieroglyph ‘nfr’ stood for ‘0’ as in the start of something, such as the base line before building a pyramid, or the empty storehouse before tithes were paid), and a similar ‘0’ had been used by ancient astronomers, such as Ptolomey, various Babylonians and other astronomers using a ‘0’ in their calculations to define the start/end of orbits and similar phenomena they observed
The problem is: could you define this as a mathematical use of 0 if you don’t also have the concept of negative numbers? (note that the concept of negative numbers was once considered ‘absurd’ in ancient Greece, because how do you physically have *less* than nothing? it’s impossible to physically have -3 apples for example – it was only with accounting that the idea of strictly negative numbers really occurred and later spread to advance mathematics which allowed various equations to be solved, which snowballed into advances in engineering and other fields)
Note that India’s use of ‘0’ as far as we know does NOT predate Babylonian use of ‘zero’ in written records, this doesn’t mean that it was not ‘invented’ independently in India, but the idea that India or any one place definitively can claim to have ‘invented’ 0 is slightly ludicrous;
while using ‘0’ can indicate that there were some mathematics and calculations occurring, this does not automatically mean one civilization/culture was ‘more advanced’ overall, nor does it directly correlate to advanced buildings or technologies, you need to have a lot of other things, and while the concept of 0 is a start, it doesn’t mean that they could integrate and define complex numbers – just that they had a concept for ‘0’
The ‘advancedness’ of any civilization compared to the European colonizers is a mix of some truth (they were different compared to a lot of Europeans and could do things with primitive tools that the Europeans didn’t know how) with a LOT of romanticism and propaganda (ie the ‘noble savage’ arguments, or the ‘arcadia-paradise-simpler-times’ or the History Channel ‘ancient aliens’ favorite)
You don’t need 0 to create ‘advanced’ buildings or works by itself, you can perfectly well make a very impressive Odeon or henge without using 0, and while you can’t construct the Empire State building without 0, you also need a lot of other things as well, not just understanding what 0 is
TL:DR having 0 does not automatically mean you are more ‘advanced’ as a civilization by itself or can automatically build better buildings, and the ‘invention’ of 0 can’t be pinned down to any one civilization
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