The Great Lakes formed the greatest group of freshwater of freshwater groups in the world.
With the concept of zero, we could express math (and by extension, everything) with just one concept: of there being something. This was contrasted with there not being something.
This presence/absence of something is very easily implementable in mechanical terms, which contributed to the development of hardware. So: the concept of 0 made our calculations easily physically implementable.
Some answers you may be looking for are the American Flag, the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. hope this helps :)