It is perhaps not surprising that the Tsimane' villagers in Bolivia cannot tell the difference between minor and major keys, or dissonant and non-dissonant sounds (Nature 535, 199–200; 2016). Alternative musical scales and intervals have been known to musicians for centuries — for example, they often account for the varying timbres of different folk music (see also go.nature.com/2avI1fn).

Your assertion that “consonant intervals ... are integral ratios of harmonics — 2:1, 4:3 and 3:2” is out of tune. Except for octaves (2:1), this has not been true in Western music since at least Bach's time. The title of his famous collection of fugues, 'The Well-Tempered Clavier', does not allude to his clavier's behaviour. All modern pianos, and therefore modern Western music, are in fact equal-tempered, such that the increase in frequency per semitone is 21/12 — that is, about 1.059 (see go.nature.com/2aazsvs). For each key from C major to B minor, the perfect fifth is not a ratio of 1:1.5, but 1:1.498.