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What is implicit in this "retrospective forecast" of human history, however, is that a numerical system much like ours with the zero and the place-value principle should have been developed somewhere between 200 and 100 B.C., for the Greek numerical system was much too rudimentary to make the subsequent developments in science and technology probable. In fact, no matter what kind of numerical symbols people of antiquity might have adopted, logic dictates that their number system should have been the same as ours with the zero concept and the place-value principle. Since man has ten fingers, it is most likely that the base of their number system would have been ten (10). The computers of 60 A.D. should have employed a binary system due to the nature of logic.
Our modern written numeration, with the zero concept and the place-value principle, is such an ingenious, efficacious, and conceptually integrated system that no one who has ever considered the history of numerical notation or mathematics fails to realize its enormous profundity, significance, and power. For instance, consider the following addition -- the same addition by means of Roman numerals and of our Hindu-Arabic numerals:
| CCLXVIII | 268 |
| MDCCCVII | 1807 |
| DCL | 650 |
| MLXXX | 1080 |
| MMMDCCCV | 3805 |
Without converting the Roman numerals into our modern system the problem is difficult, if not impossible, to solve. And this is only an addition -- multiplication or division would be far worse. Roman numerals and most other systems do not lend themselves to written computation owing largely to the static nature of their basic numerals, which are in essence only abbreviations for recording the results of computations done by means of an abacus or counting board.
For this reason, before the advent of our modern positional numeration (the zero and the place-value system), the art of reckoning remained an exclusive and highly skilled profession. Indeed, it attests to the success wherewith the master neocheaters executed their destructive substrategy, specialization of knowledge, that the knowledge of reckoning remained so exclusive a profession. That master neocheating strategy created a lack of motivation for the advancement of knowledge, particularly of science, and its accompanying mathematical/computational tools. Thus, no progress was made in the field of reckoning in the Western world beyond Greek or Roman numeration. Roman numeration, particularly, was an intentional device to keep the populace ignorant and powerless, forever confined in the perceptivity-centered modality, in a mystical cave, by a mega-dose of neocheating.
Therefore, the discovery of the zero and the development of the place-value numeration had to wait for a less oppressive intellectual climate -- a flourishing business and commercial atmosphere. Such a climate took place in India between the first and fifth centuries A.D. It was during that time in India that the zero was discovered and the system of place-value numeration was developed, almost reaching to their fullest formulation by 500 A.D. Although in recorded history the place-value number systems have been developed four times (by the Babylonians, Mayans, Chinese, and Hindus), and the zero concept has been evolved three times (by the Babylonians, Mayans, and Hindus), none outside of the Hindus have devised such a complete system of numerical operation. Furthermore, none outside of the Hindus evolved the zero concept to the degree that it is used as the null-value in all facets of calculation.
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