(posted this a couple of times and it doesn't seem to be visible. Reposting without a piece that might be causing me to be censored, lol.)
Anne Frank's diary was published in 1947. It is a historical document very important to the history of the 20th century, critically important if we consider documents accessible to high-school students and widely taught to them. The original version, and all subsequent versions until 1995 (when a reasonably complete version was first made available) as well as the vast majority of current editions, omit certain material.
This includes Anne discussing [the part I removed so as not to hit HN's word filter!]. It also includes material removed by the original editor, Otto Frank (Anne's father) where Anne is critical of her father and discusses her parents' marriage.
In fact, the 1995 edition didn't include all the missing material (some pages removed by Otto were not available, even to scholars. Nor did the 2001 edition which added the pages Otto removed. There was still some censorship of material. Only in 2018 (deep into the "woke era"!) was the full text of Anne's diaries published after 70 years of the diaries being renowned, widely discussed and taught, and quasi-universally regarded as historically important.
I think you are splitting hairs. Control of certain forms of art or literature so that they can't be revealed to all is what we're talking about. The culture in question is very different from ours so we can't expect their taboos or censorship to have exactly the same forms that we might associate with censorship (mean-looking guy with eyeshade and red pencil, hooded monks chained to desks in candlelight, omnipresent super-computer says no, etc).
For example, some stories are not just 'the stories of particular groups' but are not allowed to be told by, or in some cases told to, other groups.
Besides this, how do you know that none of these works have been painted over or hidden?
One interesting example is Josephus. A Jewish-Roman historian, he provides almost the only roughly contemporary mention of Jesus outside of biblical ones (and biblical apocrypha). He simply describes the existence of a 'superstition' (non-officially accepted religion) around Jesus, that he was crucified, and that his followers still venerated him.
Sometime in the last 2000 years, probably the Early Middle Ages, Christian scholars doctored this passage to have Josephus suggest that Jesus was a god, or at least superhuman (even though Josephus was not a Christian believer).
Modern scholarship, including religious scholars, almost unanimously accept the passage as fake. But Christian proselytizers still use it very frequently as extra-biblical confirmation of the divinity of Christ.
I don't think it is true that this rock art is an example of significant culture that has never been censored or expurgated. The taboos and rules which apply to viewing this art and/or reproducing it or the linked stories are surely analogous to a form of censorship. The fact that people have broken those rules does not change this.
I don't think that is true. There is lots of rock art which either can't be shown to outsiders (or to members of certain genders or moieties), or can be shown, but the significance behind the art is not allowed to be explained to outsiders. Some rock art can be copied for wider consumption, but the copies have to leave out certain details.
Please provide an example of an culturally important large-scale work of history or literature, at least 1,000 years old, which hasn't been abridged, extracted, expurgated, euphemized, hidden, bowdlerized, etc.
Anne Frank's diary was published in 1947. It is a historical document very important to the history of the 20th century, critically important if we consider documents accessible to high-school students and widely taught to them. The original version, and all subsequent versions until 1995 (when a reasonably complete version was first made available) as well as the vast majority of current editions, omit certain material.
This includes Anne discussing [the part I removed so as not to hit HN's word filter!]. It also includes material removed by the original editor, Otto Frank (Anne's father) where Anne is critical of her father and discusses her parents' marriage.
In fact, the 1995 edition didn't include all the missing material (some pages removed by Otto were not available, even to scholars. Nor did the 2001 edition which added the pages Otto removed. There was still some censorship of material. Only in 2018 (deep into the "woke era"!) was the full text of Anne's diaries published after 70 years of the diaries being renowned, widely discussed and taught, and quasi-universally regarded as historically important.