“The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero” —Steven PinkerZero is one of the greatest gifts ever given to humanity . It is the basis for modern calculus, statistics, financial accounting and computers. Zero is believed to have originated in three separate places: Mesopotamia, India, and Mesoamerica. In Mesopotamia the first records of zero date back to 300 BC. To them, zero was just a placeholder between numbers in a number like 502 and never had an actual numerical value. Likewise, the Maya in 350 AD independently began using zero, but just as in Mesopotamia it was strictly for place keeping (www.mediatinker.com). In 500 AD, ancient India created the very first known concept of zero. In 628 AD, the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta wrote the rules of zero in his book Bramhasputha Siddhanta. In this book the rules alluded to are one, zero does not change the value in number when added or subtracted, and two, when zero is multiplied by a number the value becomes zero (www.xslv.org).In mathe...