I don't think it does. For one, people have an intuitive understanding of basic arithmetic regardless of whether they're educated or not and this can be improve

I don't think it does. For one, people have an intuitive understanding of basic arithmetic regardless of whether they're educated or not and this can be improved through practice. On the other hand, it supposes that humans are somewhat innately helpless and just stood by while mathematics was being developed, without making practical use of it. But humans, as animals in general, are rather restless and will try until they succeed. Is is how, for example, people eventually discovered how to make boats despite having very little knowledge of how they actually worked. Furthermore, tracking expenses isn't that new. Accounting is much older than the Renaissance [1]. What the Italians did invent was double-entry bookeeping [2], and this IMO had less to do with household management than with the development of finance in 14th and 15th century Italy. I say this because, on one hand, double-entry bookeeping makes it much easier to track who owes what to whom; on the other, Italian city-states were the first to issue public debt, to have moden banks [3] (after the banca) and had money-lenders weaseling themselves into power (the Medicis). [1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Early_development_of_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Early_de... [2] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Double-entry_bookkeeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting#Double-e... [3] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank