Origins of Zero and Negative Numbers

The Origins of Zero. The Mayan Indians of Central America had one of the earliest numeration systems that included a symbol for 0 which was a shell. Prior to them, the very early Babylonians also had a positional system, but they placed only a space between "digits" to indicate a missing power. When the Greeks absorbed the Babylonian astronomy, they quickly saw a need for a symbol to represent "no powers". As early as 150 A.D. they used the letter o, omicron of their alphabet, to represent "zero". However, it was lost when the Roman system replaced the Greek one from the time of Christ until perhaps 1400.

Then the Hindu-Arabic system began to take over. There was a considerable battle over the new system in Europe, with most people sticking to the Roman system. Gradually, however, the advantages of the new Hindu-Arabic system became clear. Zero, which was its fundamental element, was called sifr in Arabic. The word passed into Latin as zephirum which over the years finally turned into zero.

The Origins of Negative Numbers. Negative numbers can be traced back to the Chinese between 200 B.C. and 220 A.D. Mathematicians first found negative numbers ugly and unpleasant, even though they kept cropping in the solutions of problems. For example, an Indian text of about 1150 A.D. gives the solution of an equation -5 and then makes fun of anything so useless.

Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci), while working on a financial problem, was forced to conclude that the solution must be a negative number, that is, a financial loss. In 1545, the rules of governing operations with negative numbers were published by Girolamo Cardano in his Ars Magna.