Fake history tells us, that the Romans did not know the number zero. That tells me, that the Romans are totally fake. They had great engineers and catapults without knowing the number 0? You can tell that to some child in Kindergarten, but hey not to a self thinker.
Anatoli Timofejewitsch Fomenko, the great Russian mathematician, debunked Roman history 30 years ago and not only that.
Latin is a new language, developed for the Roman Church, not older than 300 years. In German it writes Lateinisch = late invented in Switzerland (Monastery of St. Gall). The whole grammar of " latin" is like German ( see Robert Baldauf). In St. Gall they found many copies of the so called Roman writers.
You're under the impression that someone would have just figured it out because it is just so obvious, but that is not at all how humans are.
The perfect example is seen in art.
Boone had realized, or thought to even really try to produce a 3d appearing image on a 2d surface in the hundreds of thousands of years humans existed until the Renaissance.
People did not start producing 3d apart on 2D surfaces, until just a few hundred years ago.
All artistic renditions of 3Dbobjects except sculpture we're done as 2D until the Renaissance.
It never occurred to one single person to make a 3D appearing image until someone finally did and then all the artists were like "whish!!! That is awesome. I'm going to try that" and since then it is obviously the norm.