><<
> Irripi Ontor collector: "Oi, Grey Beard Priest. We've come to pick up the
> knowledge tribute for the Empire. One third of your books are due to be
> paid."
>
> Lhankor Mhy High Priest: "Run this third thing by me again...?"
>
> Ash
> >>
>
>In either the FS or GRoY some esteemed Dara Happan emperor type solves a
>problem using mathermatics (dividing Gazzam I think). Issaries also did some
>adding and division when he was dealing with Spare Grain. These two examples
>show that cultures value those that can do arithmetic
To regress slightly, it's not that the CONCEPT of nothing was invented, it
was the concept of the "zero" character: that something should represent
nothing.
Basically, the idea of a placeholder, absent anything in that place, was
the stunning achievement.
At least that's what it was in the RW as I understand it. Clearly everyone
knew that if you had three apples and took away three apples, you had
nothing left.
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #435