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
Because these empires had a concept of a placeholder similar to zero or simply didn’t use them as their systems didn’t use or have any needs. For example, the Romans would not have 0, but ‘nullis’ (nothing).
For example, if you talk to a Roman about how many apples are in your hand if you had no apple in your hand then the Roman wouldn’t say you have zero apple, you simply have nothing. For the Roman, you clearly don’t have *anything, duh.* So, why would such a concept even occur to them?
For the Romans, their system is based on letters. Like II, III, V, etc. and you would combine these letters to form numbers and do overall general math. This allowed them to do basic math which for the most part is designed for record-keeping, taxes, construction, and so on, for the Romans, this was more than acceptable. You don’t need a very complicated system to build a hut or a dam, usually. This also applied to many, many other cultures and civilizations which formed their own system to answer this problem.
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