It is difficult for us even those with the most minimal mathematics skills to conceive of a world without zero in it. The concept of zero hardly seems mathematical at all to us, a question seemingly of common sense and nothing more. We can understand when we are little more than infants the concept of nothing: We know when there is nothing left of milk to drink or food to eat or comfort to share. But and this is of course the catch the mathematical concept of zero is related to but is not the same thing as the more general concept of nothingness and so took human society centuries to develop. This paper traces the history and development of the concept of zero.
