Ancient Egyptians had a symbol for zero for use in accounting, and the Babylonians had a zero place-holder for their notation. Neither of these was a "true" zero in the sense we know -- they were just symbols and not used for computation. The Greeks and Romans likewise had a hazy notion of zero, with practically no use of it outside of accounting.

The evidence discovered thus far shows that the first use of a numerical zero, along with descriptions of its behavior in arithmetical operations, was in India.