Skills - another thing that old D&D got (mostly) right?

When I was still interested in contemporary D&D, I noticed that there are only a few skills that are not necessarily equivalent to ability scores. 

- Nature.

- Arcana.

- History.

- Medicine.

- Sleight of Hand.

- Perception? (mentioned here).

Forget Sleight of Hand for now; an agile PC picking pockets or opening locks is a strong archetype, despite the fact these are completely different skills in reality.

An indeed, in AD&D a thief with high Dex gets some bonuses to both picking pockets and locks.

Nature would include things like foraging, hunting, orienting, and tracking. In old school D&D, the first three are just X-in-chances, unrelated to ability scores (or class, level, etc.). AD&D adds tracking to rangers, but not much else.

Perception would include things like hear noise and finding traps. Modern D&D ties this to Wisdom, but there is no reason to think a wise cleric is more perceptive than a quick-thinking warrior or a sly thief.

The AD&D thief gets no Dex (or Wis) bonus to hear noise, but curiously gets a Dex bonus to find traps... A mistake, IMO.

Then there is Arcana and Medicine. These are not skills in B/X or AD&D - they are just things the mage and cleric are supposed to do (although using spells instead of skills).

Finally, there is no skill for lore - players discover that by themselves, not characters.

I don't have much of a conclusion here. Except that, maybe, some skills work nicely with ability scores, while others could simply IGNORE ability scores. 

In a modern game, having two types of skills would look strange - in contemporary D&D, for example, basically ALL d20 rolls include some ability score (attacks, saves, checks/skills). I'm not sure I'd do it myself. But it is something to consider, as it seems to work quite well in old-school D&D.