I can appreciate there is a huge amount of skill and knowledge making a knife/bonsai but I do believe there is more required of both such attributes to be an astrophysicist.
I am closer to a computer architect than an astrophysicist in qualifications, but I can confirm from recent experience: I have no ability to keep a Bonsai tree alive.
I think the “primitive” skill closest to the kind of mathematical thinking an astrophysicist (or mathematician) employs would be advanced knotwork. Mental geometric/topological/spatial manipulations are key to clever insights and critical to figuring out knots.
(This can be taught to/learned by some chimpanzees, BTW. …but I think there are no such examples in the wild without substantial human contact.)
Music. There was a time when arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music were all considered essential, and most importantly, interrelated, mathematical arts, taught as the Quadrivium.
Today we teach arithmetic to first graders, or earlier, start learning basic geometry in grade school and get the full course on geometry around 7th or 8th grade.
Music, of course, is not part of "STEM" and is no longer considered a valuable thing to learn, and astronomy, if it's taught at all, tends to be "here is the sun, the moon, and planets. Memorize this mnemonic for the names for the planets: My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. Whoops, I mean Just Served Us Noodles", and most people who go into astronomy don't really get courses on it until they enter college.
