The vertical smudge on the right side of the mushroom "stem"?

Yeah.

Wow. When I magnified it, I still couldn't make out any detail, so I wasn't sure. Man.

That's disturbing.

For problems like, how much grain can we store in a silo of particular dimensions? They were less prone to abstractions about that sort of thing than, say, Egyptian mathematicians.

Did you read the book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea?

Pretty fascinating look at how zero got into mathematics and how and why the Greeks and Romans got along without it.

As you note, Greeks were primarily interested in math for practical applications, particularly portioning land (hence geometry and Pythagoras). Whereas India had a cultural/religious notion of nullity that allowed them to pursue it mathematically.

Zero was actually forbidden by the Pope. Because in a world with God there could be no allowance for nothingness.

Zero was actually forbidden by the Pope.

Another reason why Zero is my hero.

Man, I read a really interesting article on zero in Atlantic Monthly in high school.

And here it is!! It's focused mainly on the millennium issue and the absence of Year Zero, Trent Reznor notwithstanding.

Another reason why Zero is my hero.

I'm all about Hey Little Twelvetoes.

Zero was actually forbidden by the Pope.

Oh, I bet this explains why the Catholic Church hated Galileo. My theory is that Galileo just replaced every zero with 'Pope.' So then he says, "The Earth goes around the Sun, which is ninety-three Pope Pope Pope, Pope Pope Pope miles away."

My theory is that Galileo just replaced every zero with 'Pope.' So then he says, "The Earth goes around the Sun, which is ninety-three Pope Pope Pope, Pope Pope Pope miles away."

That would get annoying. If I were Pope I'd have him on the rack just for that.

Did you read the book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea?

I think that's one of those books I bought but haven't gotten around to reading, yet. Thanks for the reminder.

Math is kind of an easy subject to be able to to see how these different cultures though about things very differently than we did. There's zero. There's the idea that unit fractions are the only possibility. Negative numbers. Irrational numbers. My personal favorite, infinity. Each one really requires a paradigm shift. It's hard to think about, that they didn't just not use zero, they never conceived of the possibility of something like zero.

Another reason why Zero is my hero.

There's a Zorro joke there, but I just can't come up with it. I blame my headache.