a positional system could reuse the same symbols

But a positional system could reuse the same symbols,assigning them different values based on their position in the sequence.Several civilizations developed positional notation independently,including the Babylonians,the Ancient Chinese,and the Aztecs.By the 8th century, Indian mathematicians had perfected such a system and over the next several centuries,Arab merchants, scholars, and conquerors began to spread it into Europe.This was a decimal, or base ten, system,which could represent any number using only ten unique glyphs.