| Much of the pit looked like this, or worse, before the workers got to work. A number of people in hindsight suggest that the archaeologist should have covered over the find after their first limited exploration and waited until there were better preservation techniques. The fact is, they did. The entire site is enormous, what has been excavated is a small part of it. They reburied most of Pit 1 after opening it to take the first survey. If they had waited, they wouldn't have gotten the world community interested in doing research on the site, the funding wouldn't have flowed, and the tourists wouldn't have contributed their invaluable support.
These warriors served a spiritual purpose by escorting Qin Shi Huang into the next life, and they have served another useful function by stimulating interest both within China and outside of China in the history of the ancient world. They may have faded colors, but they are the vanguard of an era of rapid advances in archaeology and related sciences in China.
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