Ivan Šprajc is a Slovenian archaeologist and one of the leading researchers of Maya archaeology and archaeoastronomy. His fieldwork has taken him repeatedly into remote areas of the Yucatán Peninsula, particularly southeastern Mexico, where he has led archaeological surveys and contributed to the documentation of previously little-known Maya sites.

In Ciudades perdidas, his scholarly expertise is combined with something rather rarer: the ability to explain archaeological work through the experiences, complications and discoveries of the people actually doing it in the field.