There aren't 8 subdivisions in an octave in western music either. Well, there are in any given scale, but there are also many scales. "Octave" is a misleading term. Given that it's just a doubling of frequency, the term is sort of as good as any other, and that douibling exists in pretty much all cultures that have developed string, pipe or other resonant body based music (including hitting hollow logs and plucking vibrating reeds / sticks / tines).

It's pretty much the foundational idea of any modality. No matter how you divide it up, the purest harmony is doubling or halving.

The commenter presumably was talking about octave equivalence, which is reportedly present across all or nearly all historical musical cultures that we know about. It’s also supposedly present in some other mammals.

Universal in the sense that a number of rocks or a number of sheep can be doubled just as a frequency can?

Yes thats what I meant, the doubling of frequency. It might seem trivial but the fact that doubling frequency sounds "right" to humans is actually quite interesting. Why does it sound "right"?

1.5**12 is about 129.74, which is as close as you can reasonably get to a power of two.

So yes, the 12-tone scale is a universal thing - you want both octaves and fifths in your scale.

(12 is actually too much, so usually that's pared down to something like 4 or 5 or 7 tones, this is where you get cultural variation.)

powers of 2 seem to work well in many things. in rhythm too. so dont be so quick to dismiss.