Who created the first positional numeral system?

Almost every society today uses a positional numeral system (for example "5267" has a "5" in the 1000s place, a "2" in the 100s place and so on) This idea was first developed by the Babylonians and was extremely important: non-place-value systems require unique symbols to represent each power of a base (think of the letters used in roman numerals), which makes calculations much more difficult.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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30 Comments

Meredith Reeves

Since a good part of the Mayan writing system is still in the process of being CORRECTLY identified, it does not fit the category.

karen twirly

Got it

Ray Chancellor

who was first--the Babylonians or the Indian math people ( 2 people-a hundred years apart)---has the mynas system been worked out yet???

Marie Giles

So you talking about number system made me look it up being curious and this is what I found Who vented number system? The most commonly used system of numerals is the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. Two Indian mathematicians are credited with developing it. Aryabhata of Kusumapura developed the place-value notation in the 5th century and a century later Brahmagupta introduced the symbol for zero.

Marie Giles

Got it

Dilip Mahashabde

The answer is not correct. It was developed by India.

Paul Backus

I got it right but always thought that the Indians were the ones who did it. If the Babylonians did it first why did it take so long to get to Europe.