The Origin of Zero

What fascinates me most about the origin of zero is how someone figured out exactly how long ago it was invented/created, and exactly where it traveled and how it was spread around the world. I noticed that all of the articles had deep detail about the number zero's expedition around the world, and included things like labeled maps to further your understanding of it's travels even more.

One thing that made a lot of sense to me is when the journalists were describing zero as starting out as just a place-holder. That really gave me a clearer idea of how it fist came about, as more of a symbol than a quantity.

In my opinion, it wasn't a single person that invented/created zero. The way I think it all happened was that the efficacious societies with good communication systems had some kind of symbol they used as place-holders, the way we use zero now.

As for the invention/creation of the actual quantity zero, I assume there was already some sort of broad way of communication with numbers to where someone could teach another person to replace their place-holder symbols with the number zero. I'm not positive on what my perspective is on that though.