Which statement is best supported by the passage?
Early number systems did not have a symbol for nothing. Ancient peoples used a blank space to show an empty place, but this could be confusing, since a blank could easily be overlooked. In India, mathematicians began to treat zero as a number in its own right and described how it behaves in addition and subtraction. Their work reached the Arab world, where scholars in Baghdad studied and expanded it, and later it travelled to Europe. Today the zero is so familiar that it is hard to imagine arithmetic without it, yet it took centuries for it to be accepted as a true number rather than only a placeholder.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. Knowledge about zero passed through several cultures and developed along the way.
- Step 1: The text follows zero from India to the Arab world and then Europe, with expansion on the way. Step 2. That describes a transfer and development of ideas. Answer: Knowledge about zero passed through several cultures and developed along the way. Why not the others: The order of places contradicts the European origin; Baghdad scholars expanded the work; Indian mathematicians treated it as a number.
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