Before its collapse around 800 AD, the ancient Maya empire spread across southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.

BBC: Maya festivals for the end of time

Start off high and cool in the city of Cuzco (UNESCO World Heritage Site), former capital of the ancient Inca Empire and today the undisputed archaeological king of the Americas.

FORBES: Higher Than A Kite In Peru

The heat got us moving the next morning, and we jammed into a boksi, a brightly-painted pickup fitted with benches, heading north to where we planned to rejoin the Nile and find traces of the upper reaches of the ancient Egyptian Empire.

WSJ: A Father-Son Vacation in Sudan, Africa

The book romps through history at a terrific rate: from ancient Greece through the Islamic empire of the 13th century, 15th-century China and Renaissance Europe to 20th-century America.

ECONOMIST: History of science

Based in White Plains, New York, the company is a remnant of the sprawling empire assembled, on the back of an ancient telegraph business, by Harold Geneen, the famous conglomerator of the 1960s.

FORBES: Muckraker

Battir is the Arab name for the ancient Jewish village Betar, the site of Bar- Kochba's last stand against the Roman Empire.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: About those Jews

LeParmentier's brief Star Wars appearance saw his character extol the virtues of the Empire's Death Star space station and pour scorn on Vader's "sad devotion to that ancient Jedi religion".

BBC: Star Wars actor Richard LeParmentier dies