Robert J. Sharer is Shoemaker Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and Curator of the American Section at the university's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He is the author of Quirigua: A Classic Maya Center and Its Sculpture and Everyday Life in Maya Civilization, as well as two previous editions of The Ancient Maya. Loa P. Traxler is a Research Scientist in the American Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

This book traces the evolution of Maya civilization through the Pre-Columbian era, a span of some 2,500 years from the origins of complex society within Mesoamerica to the end of the Pre-Columbian world with the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century. The sixth edition presents new archaeological evidence and historical studies and offers the most extensive revisions of this classic work to date. The result is the most thorough and incisive study of the origins and development of ancient Maya civilization ever published.