Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero
The idea that zero was &quot;invented&quot; at a certain time by recent humans and not in use until then has always seemed absolutely absurd to me. I will admit I haven&#x27;t read deeply into it, but there&#x27;s just no way people didn&#x27;t have a concept for &quot;none of a thing&quot; until a couple millennia ago.<p>One of the justifications used for this reasoning is &quot;You don&#x27;t go to the market and buy 0 fish&quot;. But all that tells us is: There&#x27;s no reason to record buying 0 fish or owning 0 acres of land. Another justification given is the difficulty children experience with 0 - but we don&#x27;t teach children to start counting with 0, so it makes sense that they would get tripped up there.<p>I guess the argument sometimes seems to be that we didn&#x27;t have a symbol for 0, and that this was somehow more confusing to adopt than other symbols? But if that&#x27;s the case, then isn&#x27;t claiming any culture &quot;invented&quot; zero the same as claiming a culture &quot;invented&quot; any concept they came up with a word for?<p>I&#x27;d love to hear all the reasons I am wrong and stupid.