But like... literally *why* did the Arabic numeral system (0123456789) become the preferred method for basically the entire world in an unprecedented sweep of conversion to a central system of numeral representation?

You think of 1, and you think of some thing, like a dot or a line, or whatever closed polyhedral shape you can imagine. But when you think of 2, you think of that thing being duplicated, and zero is like just some weird thought experiment where you imagine having nothing, which is basically impossibru because if you can think about it, then you have something to think about.

I mean, Roman Numerals totally make sense except for the problem that when we see too many hash-marks, we have to sit there and count them, which is sort of reconciled by the V, X, D, C, and M, but if you get into any very large numbers at all, it still takes time to process.

So is it just the efficiency of the base-ten system that did the trick (even though there's any myriad permutations of symbols which could signify any of the ten digits, so it's a still a question as to why those particular ones managed to become the preferred representation)?