Thread: History Quiz

[QUOTE=zraver;829908]

Originally Posted by Doktor

so 20 centuries or 200 years?

Big difference between the death of Jacob Rapheal Cohen and a couple of legions....

The Latin word for what we call a century is saeculum (thank you, Google); so, XX years (20) is just one-fifth of a saeculum whereas 20 of our centuries would be XX Saeculuae or MM years. But 21st Century in English translates to the XXI Saeculum in Latin, and 2011 translates to MMXI=1000+1000+10+1.

Of course the big problem for Roman maths is they had no symbol for 0... multiplication and division for them tough enough; XX/lV... (20/4) or MMXI x MCDXXIV...(2011 x 1174).

Originally Posted by snapper

Of course the big problem for Roman maths is they had no symbol for 0... multiplication and division for them tough enough; XX/lV... (20/4) or MMXI x MCDXXIV...(2011 x 1174).

They had no symbol for 0 for one very simple reason: the number Zero wasn't invented until the end of the 10th century

Originally Posted by bigross86

They had no symbol for 0 for one very simple reason: the number Zero wasn't invented until the end of the 10th century

No, the idea of zero dates to two thousands years before Christ, the Romans referred to it as null, Zeno of Elea contemplated how it could be in the 400 BC's- "how can nothing be something?", India had the symbol for 0. However it was not until 825 and al-Khwārizmī' father of Algebra (from whom we get the word algorithm) fused Eastern and Western thoughts on zero in the Islamic world that we see the full understanding of zero in all of its uses in one place in its current shape 0.

The idea that the ancients didn't have zero is a common historical myth. You can't have accounting, census taking, taxation, architecture, astronomy, engineering etc without zero in some form.