Archaeologists have held that the Casarabe culture, which emerged in the southwestern Amazon basin in the first millennium CE, was characterized by a sparse, widely distributed population and little intervention in the surrounding wilderness. Recently, however, archaeologist Heiko Prümers and colleagues conducted a study of the region using remote-sensing technology that enabled them to create three-dimensional images of the jungle-covered landscape from above, and the researchers concluded that the Casarabe people developed a form of urbanism in the Amazon basin.