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The Roman Empire was one of the greatest empires in history, here is a map of it at its height in 117 CE;
In 395 Rome split into eastern & western halves;
This coincided with the division of European Christianity between the Orthodox east & Catholic west (with Protestants breaking away from the Catholic West at a later date [so therefore it could be argued that North America is also & offshoot of Rome]);
After the rise of Islam Muslims invaded & conquered parts of the Catholic west especially the Iberian peninsula, see the Umayyad Empire at its height;
The fractured & besieged west attempted to regroup for centuries, fighting various crusades in the east and north before finally reconquering the Iberian peninsula;
Still besieged from their traditional overland trade routes to China & India & fresh from their reconquest of Iberia this invigorated west searched for new sea avenues to China & India & in doing so discovered the Americas & simply shifted their resources from the reconquest of Iberia to the conquest of the Americas;
Here the political, religious, cultural, linguistic & ethnic descendants of the western Roman Empire conquered & eventually settled, absorbing the Aztec, Mayan, Inca & other American civilisations & peoples before eventually fragmenting into many nation-states but nevertheless Latin America IS the contemporary Roman Empire.
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