[deathhand]

I mean zero as in the nothing sense. We had trade and society before we had way to mathematically describe nothing. The history is diverse and interesting:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/0

[pvg]

before we had [a] way to mathematically describe nothing.

This seems a little overstated since positional number systems are fairly sophisticated mathematics - you can deal with 'nothing' without needing zero in its modern sense.

[vanderZwan]

You can even have positional number systems without zero - that's what the Babylonians had