One of the biggest mathematical achievements in human history has to do with the origin of nothing—or zero, to be more specific.

Researchers at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library recently conducted carbon dating on an ancient Indian text known as the Bakshali manuscript. They found that some pages in the manuscript date to the third or fourth century, five hundred years older than previously thought. That pushes back the origin of what would eventually become the zero symbol, 0, we use today.

The manuscript shows a series of Sanskrit numerals. In it, zero is represented by a small dot.

“This zero in India is the seed from which the concept of zero as a number in its own right represented by