QQC Part Eight

So I know we are suppose to have a quote but to be completely honest I couldn't choose just one. Before reading I did have a small amount of prior knowledge about where numbers had come from, but I had no idea the history! I didn't know that people actually lived by not knowing how to count, that they just had a pile of rocks and made trades in accordance to the number of rock. Just a trade one for one. Also from a linguistic stand point the fact that we still use the root of the words created to portray written numbers is amazing! It happens to be one of the few things we still continue to see in modern day language. Also I didn't know that depending on if there is a line above Roman numerals or not determines if you multiply.

The idea that the human race only came up with the 'zero' a few hundred years ago is astounding. The concept itself I would think is not that hard, if you have say three things and you say loose those three things you have nothing left. But apparently this was not an easy concept mathematically. The question I have though is not one I think was addressed in the reading, where did the name 'zero' actually come from? They address how zero was proven originally and then what the misconceptions were (aka don't divide by zero!) but they do not address how exactly zero got the name zero.