THE ANCIENT GREEKS did not recognize 0 as a number. The people who mastered geometry and calculated pi were baffled by 0. As were the Romans. In India, where the number system we use today originated, the Hindus had some concept of it as a part of bigger numbers like 10 and 100, where it serves as a place-holder to show that the figure 1 represents 10s or 100s rather than units.They wrote it as a dot, which may have been enlarged to a ring, to give us the now familiar 0. An inscription dated 876AD shows use of a 0 as we would recognize it today.
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Fast-forward to 1975 and the Year Zero takes on a far more sinister significance. That year, when the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, seized control of Cambodia, they changed the calendar to Year Zero and erased all that had gone before. Anyone who was perceived to be a threat to the regime was executed. You could be killed for simply wearing glasses, as that was regarded as a sign of being an intellectual, and intellectuals were a threat. By the time Pol Pot’s killing spree was brought to an end
in 1979, an estimated 1 to 2 million people had been killed.
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The most universal word for 0 today is zero. Like nil, it originated in Italy, thanks to the legendary m a t h e m a t i c i a n Leonardo Fibonacci. He took the Arabic word ‘sifr’ (meaning empty) and gave it an Italian flourish, ‘zefiro’, which was later abbreviated to ‘zero’. It also gave us the word zephyr, for a faint, almost nonexistent wind.
