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Some things are best left undisturbed.
According to the Chinese government, that includes the remaining 6,000 terracotta soldiers and the rest of Qin Shi Huang's colossal burial site in Xi'an, China.Â
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China's first emperor was buried over two thousand years ago in the most opulent tomb complex ever made in China.Â
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Even its protection system is impressive - an underground moat of poisonous mercury to keep out looters.
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It contains a sprawling city-size collection of underground caverns containing everything the emperor would need for the afterlife.Â
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The Qin emperor chose to bury clay reproductions of his armies, concubines, administrators and servants with him in the tomb.
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The first of the 8,000 life-size terracotta statues was unearthed in 1974 by farmers digging wells near Xi'an.Â
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To date a total of 2,000 soldiers have been dug out of the earth  - but now work has stopped.
'The big hill, where the emperor is buried — nobody's been in there,' archaeologist Kristin Romey, curatorial consultant for the Terracotta Warrior exhibition at New York City’s Discovery Times Square told website Livescience.
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'Partly it's out of respect for the elders, but they also realize that nobody in the world right now has the technology to properly go in and excavate it.'
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Archaeologists are being kept on a leash until new technologies have been developed that can safely uncover precious artifacts without disturbing them.
'It's really smart what the Chinese government is doing,' said Romey.
'When we went into [Egyptian King] Tut's tomb, think about all the information we lost just based on the excavation techniques of the 1930s."
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Howevers, she believes technology has almost reached the stage where tiny, robotic cameras could be sent in.
'I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some sort of robotic visual survey going in there at some point,' she said.
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Another issue that is preventing archaeologists from diving into the central tomb that holds Qin's palace is a suspected moat of hazardous mercury that is thought to surround Qin's central burial spot.
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The Teracotta Army
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- The Terracotta Army or the "Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses", is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China.
- It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BC and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife, and to make sure that he had people to rule over.
- The figures, dating from 3rd century BC, were discovered in 1974 by some local farmers in Lintong District, Xi'an, Shaanxi province.
- The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses. Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits near by Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum.
- Other terracotta non-military figures were also found in other pits and they include officials, acrobats, strongmen and musicians.
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