Page:The Hindu-Arabic Numerals (1911).djvu/14

and it had no particular promise. Not until centuries later did the system have any standing in the world of business and science; and had the place value which now characterizes it, and which requires a zero, been worked out in Greece, we might have been using Greek numerals to-day instead of the ones with which we are familiar.

Of the first number forms that the world used this is not the place to speak. Many of them are interesting, but none had much scientific value. In Europe the invention of notation was generally assigned to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean until the critical period of about a century ago,—sometimes to the Hebrews, sometimes to the Egyptians, but more often to the early trading Phoenicians.^[1]

The idea that our common numerals are Arabic in origin is not an old one. The medieval and Renaissance writers generally recognized them as Indian, and many of them expressly stated that they were of Hindu origin.^[2]