Who invented Zero ?
It is difficult to answer the question in a satisfactory form. If someone had come up with the concept of zero which everyone then saw as a brilliant innovation to enter mathematics from that time on, the question would have a satisfactory answer even if we did not know which genius invented it. The historical record, however, shows quite a different path towards the concept. Zero makes shadowy appearances only to vanish again almost as if mathematicians were searching for it yet did not recognise its fundamental significance. The oldest known text to use zero is the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhaaga, dated 458 AD. It was first introduced to the world centuries later by Al-Khwarizmi, a Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. The first apparent appearance of a symbol for zero appears in 876 in India on a stone tablet in Gwalior. Documents on copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century AD, abound.
As Becky says above, the concept of Zero was born in India and from there travelled to the Middle East. The Arabs took the concept to Europe. In the Americas, the Mayas, who were advanced astronomers and mathematicians came up with the concept on their own, as Becky says. Some confusion rises from the “nationalistic” fervor of some Americans (from the Americas, not the US OF A) who, since Europeans acquired the knowledge second hand, used the date of Mayan discovery as the FIRST DATE of its creation, thus making the Mayas the first to use it, a mistake that History corrects.
