Asia is the world’s largest continent ... Fisherpeople catch fish and crabs or gather honey in the mangrove forests. Image caption, Bengal tiger sitting under some mangrove trees.

It has become the defining image of China's Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 - one man standing in the way of a column of tanks, a day after hundreds, possibly thousands, had been shot dead.

This multi-volume History of Civilizations of Central Asia is the first attempt to present a comprehensive picture of the cultures that flourished and vanished at the heart of the Eurasian continent ...