ARE ARABIC NUMERALS ARABIC?

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Did the Arabs really invent the Arabic numerals? What about Roman numerals, are they even the work of the ancient Romans?

The numbers we use are called Arabic. This is the most common system of numbers notation. The first documented mention of them dates back to 976. Although we call them Arabic, these figures came from India. The characters for them evolved from the Brahmi script. In India, the decimal system using zero became widespread around 700. Arab mathematicians and astronomers spread the Indian number notation to Europe; thus, the numerals were called Arabic.