This Day in History

Lascaux cave paintings discovered

On 12 September 1940, prehistoric cave paintings near Montignac, France are discovered by four teenagers who stumbled upon the ancient artwork after following their dog down a narrow entrance into a cavern, the Lascaux grotto. The 15,000- to 17,000-year-old paintings, consisting mostly of animal representations, are among the finest examples of art from the Upper Paleolithic period.
First studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil, the Lascaux grotto consists of a main cavern 66 feet wide and 16 feet high. The walls of the cavern are decorated with some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols and nearly 1,500 engravings. The pictures depict in excellent detail numerous types of animals, including horses, red deer, stags, bovines, felines, and what appear to be mythical creatures. There is only one human figure depicted in the cave: a bird-headed man with an erect phallus. Archaeologists believe that the cave was used over a long period of time as a center for hunting and religious rites.
The Lascaux grotto was opened to the public in 1948 but was closed in 1963 because artificial lights had faded the vivid colors of the paintings and caused algae to grow over some of them. A replica of the Lascaux cave was opened nearby in 1983 and receives tens of thousands of visitors annually.

Steven Biko dies in prison

On this same day, in 1977, Steven Biko, leader of South Africa’s “Black Consciousness Movement,” dies of severe head trauma in a prison cell in Pretoria days after being interrogated by police in Port Elizabeth. He had suffered a major blow to his skull six days earlier during the interrogation and deprived of medical attention. Dumped, naked and shackled, on the floor of a police vehicle and driven 740 miles to Pretoria Central Prison. He died the next day, aged 30.
Steven Bantu Biko, born in 1946, was the most influential anti-apartheid leader of the 1970’s. As a medical student in 1968, he founded the all-black South African Students’ Organization with the aim of overcoming the “psychological oppression of blacks by whites.” Similar to the “Black Power” movement in the US, Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement stressed black identity, self-esteem, and self-reliance. In the 1970s, the movement spread from the university communities to black communities throughout South Africa.
Opposing apartheid covertly he was arrested four times during the next few years and held without trial for months at a time and for the last time on August 18, 1977.
South African authorities attempted to cover-up the circumstances of Biko’s death, saying he starved himself on a hunger strike. They later claimed he died of kidney failure. Finally, when the findings of a postmortem were made public, they said he might have “hurt his head when he fell out of bed.” A judicial inquiry found no one responsible for his death and most of the policemen who interrogated Biko were promoted.
Biko’s death became an international rallying point against South Africa’s repressive government. In November 1977, the United Nations voted a partial arms embargo against South Africa as more sweeping economic and military sanctions were vetoed by the United States, Britain, and France.
Apartheid was abolished in South Africa in 1991, and in 1995, one year after Nelson Mandela was elected the country’s first black head of government, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to examine apartheid-era crimes.