Year 1000
The concept of the zero was introduced in India, where the dot symbol or sunya was used to indicate an empty space. The system of numbers 0 through 9 came to Syria from India in the mid-seventh century and to Europe via the Islamic world around the year 1000. Gerbert d'Aurillac, a French scholar, studied in Spain where he probably learned algebra (from the Arab al jabr) and decimal numbers from Islamic mathematicians. He is credited with introducing these numbers into Europe but the idea of the zero was not understood at first. Today the numbers that we use are called Arabic numbers because of their history.