April 27, 1998, 10:26 p.m. (Message 11826)
> >The concept of zero was invented by the Phonecians and named 'zero' by the >Arabs. Sorry, but I don't know when Europeans accepted zero as a number. My library tells me that the first known use of the zero was in Babylon at the end of the 3rd millennium, but that it was only in the 4th/5th centuries AD that the sytematic use of the nine figures + zero, with their positions deciding their value (as powers of ten) appeared. The oldest known text showing this system is in sanskrit and dates from AD 458. Within a centrury, the system used by Indian astronomers became exactly what we still use today, and its use gradually spread to other cultures. Adopted by the Arabs (while the Europeans were still juggling with MDCXVI), it finally arrived in Europe in the Middle Ages. The earliest known use was in Muslim Spain, and two texts from the 10th century show the modified forms closely ressembling our own (which are different from the arab numerals used in the east). The Spanish had difficulties with the f sound, and reduced the Arabic name "sifr" to "zero". Two centuries later, mathematicians of non-muslim Europe were learning to replace pebbles and counters by the written symbols 0 to 9. By the 18th century, the Scots had learned to count to 32, thereby fixing the lenght of their most popular dances. The Phoenicians' main contribution to our dance form was their development of the alphabet, without which ... > >Should we have a dance for zeros? If you wish, but don't ask me to join in. More appropriate would be a 2000-bar reel, to which an extra bar should of course be added for those not celebrating until the following year. Refs: Georges Ifrah, "Histoire universelle de chiffres" Martin, Grenoble, France. ------------------ http://perso.wanadoo.fr/scots.in.france