The number zero is something we all take for granted, yet its conceptual origin has eluded archaeologists and historians. An updated analysis of an ancient Indian manuscript is shedding new light on ...

Detail of the Bakhshali manuscript, with a dot used in the bottom line, a placeholder that is recognized as the earliest zero symbol (courtesy Bodleian Libraries/ University of Oxford) Radiocarbon ...

A small dot on an old piece of birch bark marks one of the biggest events in the history of mathematics. The bark is actually part of an ancient Indian mathematical document known as the Bakhshali ...

A black dot on a third-century Indian manuscript has been identified by Oxford University as the first recorded use of the mathematical symbol for zero, 500 years earlier than previously thought.