Numerical symbols are used to represent numbers, should be separated from numbers. The Egyptians were the first to create a ciphered numeral scheme, and the Greeks were the next to map their counting numbers onto the Ionian and Doric alphabets.
Roman numerals, which used variations of letters from the Roman alphabet, were prevalent in Europe until the late century when the superior Hindu–Arabic numeral system spread, and the Hindu–Arabic numeral system is still the most widely used system for representing numbers today.
The symbol for zero, which was created by ancient Indian mathematicians around AD, was crucial to the system’s effectiveness.
The first written use of zero was in the Brhmasphuasiddhnta, the key work of Indian mathematician Brahmagupta, in AD . He considered 0 to be a number and addressed operations that included it, such as division. The definition had clearly entered Cambodia as Khmer numerals by this period, and evidence shows that it later spread to China and the Islamic world.