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            *Without zero, modern electronics wouldn’t exist. Without zero, there’s no calculus, which means no modern engineering or automation*. Without zero, much of our modern world literally falls apart.

Humanity’s discovery of zero was “a total game changer … equivalent to us learning language,” says Andreas Nieder, a cognitive scientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

*But for the vast majority of our history, humans didn’t understand the number zero . It’s not innate in us . We had to invent it. And we have to keep teaching it to the next generation.*

Other animals, like *monkeys, have evolved to understand the rudimentary concept of nothing*. And scientists just reported that even tiny bee brains can compute zero.   But it’s only humans that have seized zero and forged it into a tool. So let’s not take zero for granted. *Let us see  how numbers have evolved from ZERO*

*Imagine a box with nothing in it. Mathematicians call this empty box “*the empty set.” It’s a physical representation of zero*. What’s inside the empty box? Nothing.

Now take another empty box, and place it in the first one.

How many things are in the first box now?

There’s one object in it. Then, put another empty box inside the first two. How many objects does it contain now? Two. And that’s how “we derive all the counting numbers from zero … from nothing.

Development in India “* We are of the view that in ancient India are found numerous so-called cultural antecedents’ that make it plausible that the mathematical zero digit was invented there*,” said Gobets, secretary and leading member of Project Zero. Project Zero is an organization composed of academics and graduate students who study the development of zero  in India*.

*The first modern equivalent of numeral zero comes from a Hindu astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta in 628*. His symbol to depict the numeral was a *dot underneath a number*. He also wrote standard rules for reaching zero through addition and subtraction and the results of operations that include the digit. A circle inscribed on a temple wall in Gwalior, India, dates back to the ninth century. According to the University of Oxford, this is the oldest recorded example of zero. The numeral can also be seen on an ancient Indian scroll called the Bhakehali Manuscript. Discovered in 1881, the scroll was assumed to have been a contemporary of the temple in Gwalior, but modern carbon dating reveals its origin in the third or fourth century. Thus, many scientists opine that ndia discovered zero.

After its development in India*, zero would be taken back by the Arabian voyagers to their cities and towns. Eventually, the number would reach Baghdad by 773 AD. In the ninth century, A Persian mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi, worked on equations that equaled zero. Thus, Algebra was invented. He also developed quick methods for multiplying and dividing numbers, known as algorithms. Al-Khwarizmi referred to zero as ‘sifr,’ from which our word cipher is derived. By 879 Ad, the dot had transformed and taken an oval shape that closely resembled the modern zero number.

When the Moorish conquest of Spain happened in the middle of the twelfth century, Al-Khowarizmi’s work translations finally made their way to England. *Italian mathematician Fibonacci developed the number further by using it to do equations without an abacus. By the 1600s, zero had spread widely throughout Europe.

It was fundamental in Rene Descartes’ Cartesian coordinate system and in calculus, developed independently by Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Later, calculus paved the way for physics, engineering, computers, and most modern financial and economic theories.