Older cultures like the Babylonians used a marker of some sort to designate the space where no number goes, such as what comes between six and nine in the number six hundred and nine. The Greeks even used a round figure similar to the modern zero. It wasn’t until the Indian mathematicians got a hold of zero that people started thinking of it as a number that could be used as more than a placeholder for other numbers. It sounds weird, but that was a major step forward in mathematics!

【生詞注釋】
Babylonian n.巴比倫人
marker 標記
designate vt.指定
mathematician n.數學家
placeholder n.占位符
weird adj.奇怪

【參考譯文】
古文化比如巴比倫人用某種標記來指定沒有數字的位置，比如數字609，6和9之間的數字位置。古希臘人用一個類似現代0的圓形數字來表示。直到印度數學家發明了0，人們才開始思考0對于其他數字來說不只可以用作一個占位符。聽起來很奇怪，但那是數學界一個重要的進步。