Mysteries of vernacular: Zero,
通用俗语的谜团：“Zero”，
a number that indicates an absence of units.
一个表示单位是没有的数字。
In order to understand the genesis of the word zero, we must begin with the very origins of counting.
要想明白“zero”一词的起源，我们必须从计数的起源开始。
The earliest known archaeological evidence of counting dates back approximately 37,000 years
有关计数最早的考古学证据出现在大约37000年前，
and is merely a series of notches in bone.
而那仅仅是一些有刻痕的骨头。
It wasn't until around 2500 B.C. that the first written number system began to take form in Mesopotamia,
直到公元前2500年，第一个书面计数体系才开始在美索不达美亚出现，
using the units one, ten, and sixty.
该体系使用数字1、10和60。
Fast forward another three millennia to seventh century India
快进3000年，在7世纪的印度，
where mathematicians used a single dot to distinguish between numbers like 25, 205, and 250.
数学家用一个点来区分诸如25、205、250等数字。

Employed as both a placeholder and a number, this all-powerful dot eventually morphed into the symbol we know today.
既作为占位符，又作为数字，这个全能的点逐渐演变成为我们今日所熟悉的数学符号。
The word zero comes from the Arabic safira, whose literal translation is empty.
“Zero”一词来源自阿拉伯语“safira”，字面意思是指空无。
Passing through Italian as zefiro, zero came into English in the seventeenth century.
传入意大利语后成了“zefiro”，它在17世纪又变成了英语的“zero”。
A second descendant of the Arabic root was adopted into English through old French as the word cipher.
该阿拉伯词源的第二个衍生词是从古法语传入英语的单词“cipher”。
Originally sharing the meaning empty with zero, cipher later came to describe a code,
“cipher”本意与“zero”相同，都是指没有，后来开始指代密码，
as early codes often used complicated substitutions between letters and numbers.
早期密码通常被用作字母和数字间复杂的替换。
From this shared empty origin, zero continues to represent the number that represents nothing.
从这个共同的“空无”源头起，“zero”就一直被用来指代“没有”这个数字。