时差N小时 数字零的由来(下)

（单词翻译）

Older cultures like the Babylonians used a marker of some sort to designate¹ the space where no number goes, such as what comes between six and nine in the number six hundred and nine. The Greeks even used a round figure similar to the modern zero. It wasn’t until the Indian mathematicians² got a hold of zero that people started thinking of it as a number that could be used as more than a placeholder for other numbers. It sounds weird³, but that was a major step forward in mathematics!

【参考译文】

古文化比如巴比伦人用某种标记来指定没有数字的位置，比如数字609，6和9之间的数字位置。古希腊人用一个类似现代0的圆形数字来表示。直到印度数学家发明了0，人们才开始思考0对于其他数字来说不只可以用作一个占位符。听起来很奇怪，但那是数学界一个重要的进步。