India, May 23 -- We've been trying to work around borders more or less since we first invented them. Often, this wish came from a drive for power. Ancient kingdoms, over and over, imagined they would "rule everything under the heavens".

A bid to prosper and endure drove such campaigns too, since prospering and enduring have always been difficult to do alone. Here are three of the earliest attempts at a unified world order.

A first effort: Akkadian Empire, Mesopotamia (2300 BCE)

This is the earliest known multinational empire. At its peak, it consisted of a range of city-states that stretched from parts of Iran in the east to the Levant (modern-day Syria and Israel) in the west, and from Anatolia in modern-day Turkey in the north to par...