Final answer:
The number system that we use today originated in India and was developed by Indian mathematicians. They made important contributions such as decimals, zero, and negative numbers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The number system that we use today originated in India in the first centuries of the Common Era. Although Europeans obtained these numbers from the Arabs, they are known as 'Indian' in the Middle East because the Arabs obtained them from India. Indians made significant contributions to mathematics and were the first to use decimals, the number zero, and negative numbers. They also made important advancements in trigonometry. The Greek mathematician Archimedes made calculations with about 4-figure accuracy, but decimal fractions did not appear in Europe until much later. The decimal positional number system that we use today and the invention of algebra were influenced by Greek and Islamic mathematics in Europe. Overall, the invention and development of the number system can be traced back to Indian mathematicians.