the book of numbers chapter 0

"we had not thought of everything. Or to be more precise, we had not thought about nothing. Zero had not been invented." I can't fathom the world without zeros. Does that mean that multiples of 10 don't exist? Does that mean theres no negative numbers because theres no number of nothing to cross into the negative? it blows me away to think that there used to be a time where to have nothing is something that doesn't exist.