Zero emerges independently more than once: among the Maya of Mesoamerica, and in India, where the mathematician Brahmagupta (7th century CE) is the first to give it formal rules of arithmetic.

It reaches the Islamic world through scholars like Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (9th century), whose own name — Latinized as algorismus — gives us the word algorithm.

A number system and a method for calculating with it arrive together. That is not a coincidence.