Tomb Tells Tale of Family Executed by China's 1st Female Emperor

BS aside... there's a very serious element to the concept of preservation.

Preservation of ancient human remains, especially those related to dynasties, is essential. It's essential because in various cultures - and in various times throughout human history - ancient remains have been a source of profit, theft, and even warfare.

If a government or museum fails to unearth them in the name of preservation (which means - most of the time - remains are collected, logged, and placed into a box and kept in some type of un-seen storage facility) it's guaranteed they'll be stolen, squandered, sold for high-dollar profits on black markets, processed into medicinals (by people who believe eating remnants of the dead is healthy - or a means to a higher state of being) or exploited in other ways.

Take for example the 400 year-long practice of Mummy Brown. A paint color originally made from the ground up remains of Egyptian mummies - it became so popular and so widely used that it netted paint-production companies and small business owners thousands (equivalent to millions in today's money) in profit.

THE MUMMY TRADE
By the 16th century, despite legal restrictions, exporting mummies from Egypt to Europe to be ground up and used as “medicine” was big business – what Fagan describes as “a flourishing trade in human flesh”[8].

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It was in practice for so long that when they used up all the mummified available remains they substituted with fake remains to continue the practice. And even beyond that, it remained in use for so long that the origin of mummies as paint-medium became more akin to myth so much so that people honestly didn't believe that 'this paint was originally made from mummies'

[h=2]THE DEATH OF MUMMY BROWN[/h]Given these views, it is somewhat of a wonder that Mummy Brown continued to be used for four centuries [69]. But the death knell was sounding. In her biography of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, his widow Georgina recalls a particularly fateful turning point. The artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema and his family were visiting the Burne-Jones’ for lunch on Sunday, a day which she says “was remembered by us all as the day of the funeral of a tube of mummy-paint. We were sitting together after lunch ..., the men talking about different colours that they used, when Mr.Tadema startled us by saying he had lately been invited to go and see a mummy that was in his colourman's workshop before it was ground down into paint. Edward scouted [scornfully rejected] the idea of the pigment having anything to do with a mummy — said the name must be only borrowed to describe a particular shade of brown — but when assured that it was actually compounded of real mummy, he left us at once, hastened to the studio, and returning with the only tube he had, insisted on our giving it decent burial there and then. So a hole was bored in the green grass at our feet, and we all watched it put safely in, and the spot was marked by one of the girls planting a daisy root above it”[70].

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Modern archeology is always waging a fight against time and vandals to preserve remains and learn from them in the process before they're truly sabotaged for personal and corporate gain.

People should support preservation and protection, not oppose it.

The idea that an ancient grave will remain hidden and unknown to EVERYBODY is ridiculous. If scientists and archaeologists can discover it so can the treasure hunters - and they DO beat scientists to the punch all too often with very tragic results.

Modern methods of excavation and preservation / cataloging developed in order to thwart practices such as what went into Mummy Brown and countless other illegal trade systems and schemes. Protecting remains from being plundered with acts of honor and remembrance is the ultimate act of respect.