Doesn't the placeholder imply nothingness? E.g. 10 means 1 ten and 0 ones.

No, that implication is not automatic. The Babylonian numeral system evolved over milenaries, and the simple space noting the absence of a digit between two digits was later noted by a "0" digit. But this symbol was never used by itself, so it did not mean "nothingness". In the same way, a civilization having the concepts of addition and subtraction does not automatically induce the concept of negative numbers.

On the other side, ancient Egyptian numerals did have a zero, but it was only for nothingness. But they did not have a placeholder zero, because their systems was similar to Greek and Roman numerals.