Comment by adrian_b

While the use of zero and of the positional writing system for numbers have become widespread in Europe after taking them from the Arabs, which had previously taken them from India, these were already known in the Ancient World, both in Ancient Greece and even earlier in Assyria and Babylonia.

However, in the Ancient World the use of zero and positional numbers was restricted to some special applications, e.g. in astronomical tables, and it was unknown for most of the people.

The most novel feature of the Indian system was the application of the positional principle to decimal numbers, instead of sexagesimal numbers, and not the use of zero, which did not differ much from how it was used earlier.