Zero & Emptiness

There is an interesting story about zero and nothingness in human civilization that I'd like to share.

Phoenicia, the ancient Semitic civilization, once had enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC. One main reason they failed and disappeared in the human history was that they could not distinguish zero from nothingness. I don’t know whether or not the Phoenician had invented the decimal system, but they were the first to used decimal system to record business trading figures “internationally” and very successful. However, they used a blank space to denote the “zero” figure. So a number, for instance, like “347021” would be recorded as “347 21”. The digital number used here are only for convenience, since they were not written in this format. In the beginning, it would not have caused a lot of issues. But when the trading have gotten bigger and bigger and the trading numbers grew with it. Due to omission of a “zero” figure, confusion, argument, distrust arose and eventually caused all trading business to shut down.  

Later on, King Asoka, the great Indian emperor, spread the Buddha-Dharma from India, Afghanistan, Iran, and then up to Syria. The Buddha’s transcend wisdom taught people the concept of "Śūnyatā" (Sanskrit) meaning "emptiness,"『空』, or “nothingness.” Overtime, the Arabian had developed the decimal system ,by recognizing the difference between nothingness and zero, using a “zero” to replace a space " ", and then, therefore, with the accurate numeric recording system and their trading skill, successfully dominated the world trading. Even up to today their influence in world trading is still cannot be negligible.

Human civilization is an integration of various kinds of culture, more or less, isn't it?