> There's no documented proof that Indian system was descended from another system. [...] Hence, purely of Indian creation. If the Babylonians developed a plac

> There's no documented proof that Indian system was descended from another system. [...] Hence, purely of Indian creation. If the Babylonians developed a place value number system with a zero in it before the Indians did, then it's more likely the Indians copied it from the Babylonians and changed it to base 10, than it is that the systems were developed independently, because the two civilizations were in close contact with each other. Number systems are exactly the sort of thing that ancient traders would share with each other -- it only needs to happen once during the many hundreds or thousands of such contacts. The onus of proof is hence on you to prove any such single contact didn't happen before claiming "Hence, purely of Indian origin". It's better to write, as the article did: > whether the Indians got the idea of a place value system from the Babylonians [...] is simply not known