Babylonian Sexagesimal System: Positional Notation Without Zero

By around 1800 BCE, Babylonian scribes in Mesopotamia developed the first positional number system, using base-60 notation recorded on clay tablets including Plimpton 322. A digit's value depended on its location in the number. The system lacked a symbol for zero—scribes left blank spaces, making numbers ambiguous since 1 and 60 appeared identical. Around 300 BCE, scribes added a placeholder symbol within numbers but never at the end. This absence of zero as a concept limited the system's mathematical applications.