The lake offered a thoroughfare for their canoes, and communication was easy for long distances. To cite only one illustration: flint was brought from Grand Pressigny, in France, and manufactured in certain Swiss localities. There was much variety and division of labor between different villages. One manufactured flint very largely--so at and around Moosseedorf; while Robenhausen and Wangen have furnished great quantities of cloth. Others were rather centres for the manufacture of pottery. Even in the same village one area is richer in one product, a second in another. There was much variety as well as freedom of intercommunication. The whole region lay a little back from the great Danube thoroughfare, but near enough to it to retain connection with the larger world. Life was not altogether monotonous. The lake-dwellings have been divided according to their age into three groups or stages, representing three epochs more or less marked.[67] _Stage I._ _Archaic Epoch._--Axes small and made out of indigenous material. "Hammer-axes" and utensils of horn and bone rude. No decorations on weapons, utensils, nor on the crude pottery. Plaiting and weaving practised. Population in Switzerland at this time seems to have been sparse. Food obtained from hunt more than from domestic animals. Examples: Chavannes (Schafis) Moosseedorf, Wauwyl. People brachycephalic. _Stage II._ _Middle Neolithic Epoch._--Weapons and utensils more perfect. Stone axes finely polished, often with hole for handle, sometimes very large. Beside the commoner minerals five to eight per cent of implements made of nephritoids (nephrite, jadeite, and chloromelanite). These are almost absent in Epochs I and III. Pottery of far better material and manufacture, with traces of ornament. Remains of domestic and wild animals nearly equal. Domestic animals are turbary pig, goat, sheep, turbary cattle, but _primigenius_ form present though less common. Brachycephalic and dolichocephalic people nearly equal in number. Examples: Robenhausen and Concise. _Stage III._ _Copper Epoch._--Hammer-axes, beautifully finished. Bone and horn implements. Nephritoid minerals less used. Pottery more artistic. Cord-decoration appears. Certain ornaments, weapons, and implements are made of copper. Domesticated animals improve and form a larger part of the food than game. Cattle especially increase in numbers, and a new race of sheep has arisen. Long-heads more numerous than broad-heads. Examples: Roseax, at Morges. Locraz, Ferril (Vinelz).[68] It is interesting to notice that remains of domestic cattle are abundant in all ages, that goats are more abundant than sheep in the earliest lake-dwelling, but that the sheep became equally numerous in the second epoch, while they decidedly outnumbered the goats during the Bronze period. This is what we should expect from the advance of culture.