Maria Popova, the writer behind BrainPickings.org, wrote a summary of Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. In her essay, "The Invention of Zero: How Ancient Mesopotamia Created the Mathematical Concept of Nought and Ancient India Gave it Symbolic Form," Popova writes:  

Central to humanity’s quest to grasp the nature of the universe and make sense of our own existence is zero, which began in Mesopotamia and spurred one of the most significant paradigm shifts in human consciousness — a concept first invented (or perhaps discovered) in pre-Arab Sumer, modern-day Iraq, and later given symbolic form in ancient India. 

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