Why are fixed resistors’ values indicated by color bands rather than printing the numeric value on their exterior?

Because there are so many different values of numbers, it would be impractical to use 1Ω, 2Ω, 3Ω... etc... Using colored bands helps make reading it a little easier to the trained eye. There are hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions of different resistors would need to exist to cover every value. So you just use something called "preferred values" with their resistance values posted on them instead.