Have you ever messed with the calendar on your phone or your laptop and tried to go back in time as far as you could? Did you notice that there isn’t the year zero? Is the calendar broken, you may ask? There actually isn’t a year zero, and here’s why!
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The Idea of Zero
The birth of zero most likely took place in ancient Mesopotamia, which is now part of present-day Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Kuwait. The first recorded use of a zero-like symbol dates to sometime around the third century B.C. But it was Fibonacci who introduced the 0 to Europe through his book Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation) in 1202.
The Reason
The reason there is no “year zero” is that the concept of zero was not known to the man who invented our year-numbering system. His name was Dionysius Exiguus, and he lived in Europe in the 6th century. The idea of zero did not reach Europe until almost 600 years later, as I have mentioned.
There’s Actually the Year Zero
The year zero doesn’t exist in the Gregorian Calendar, which is the one we use daily, due to the late presence of the idea of “0” in Europe. But what about other calendars created by civilizations that had known “0” for a long time? The answer is: they do have the year zero!
For example, the Vikram Samvat and the Shaka Samvat, two main calendars in common use in present-day India, which had known the idea of zero long before the Europeans, have a zero point of 57 BC and 78 AD, respectively.