Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

by Charles Seife

In the very beginning of mathematics, it seems that people could only distinguish between one and many. A caveman owned one spearhead or many spearheads; he had eaten one crushed lizard or many crushed lizards. There was no way to express any quantities other than one and many. Over time, primitive languages evolved to distinguish between one, two, and many, and eventually one, two, three, many, but didn’t have terms for higher numbers. Some languages still have this shortcoming. The Siriona Indians of Bolivia and the Brazilian Yanoama people don’t have words for anything larger than three; instead, these two tribes use the words for “many” or “much.”