Who started pruning grape vines? Does anyone know when pruning the leaves from vine first started or who by? I know it wasn't practiced until recent (last 500 years or so) but haven't been able to pinpoint who and when?
I'm assuming you want to say, "Who are the first people to domesticate grape vines?". Grapevines are not "bushes" they are technically vines. In the wild they grow up the side of trees in a forest and try to reach their leaves above those of the trees and also grow their fruit high so the birds can eat berries and scatter the seeds.

Wild grape vines have 2 sexes but domesticated vines are hermaphroditic, which means they are self fertile (both sexes in the same flower) which makes it so much incredibly easier for the vines to produce fruit. It was a game changer when humans found these vines. Instead of only female plants producing fruit, now all vines produced fruit and lots of it. At the same time humans realize you could easily propagate vines by taking cuttings from a mother vine and they would produce the same exact vine over and over (a form of cloning). 

There is evidence that suggests that humans had domesticated grape vines almost 10,000 years ago. It probably started with some people growing vines up trees deliberately and then switching to a trellis system to simulate trees. There are pictures in the ancient Egyptian tombs showing grapes being trained and harvested on a trellis system. So they were pruning them way back then. Later on, if you walked through a vineyard near ancient Rome, it wouldn't look too much different from vineyards you see anywhere in the world. So, we have been growing vines essentially the same way for at least 2000 years.