WOMEN used to look for a man who was strong, protective and a good provider.

Now, in addition to those qualities, they require him to be caring, sensitive, understanding and a good communicator.

"But you can't have him, ladies, because he's got a boyfriend."

This was how Australian author Allan Pease began his talk to the Caerphilly Business Forum at Blackwood Miners' Institute last week.

Working with his wife, Barbara, Mr Pease has written eight best-sellers with combined sales of 16 million copies and translations into 47 languages.

The title of his talk in Blackwood was Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps.

Most of Mr Pease's arguments are based around the Stone Age division of labour, when men did the hunting and women handled the fruit gathering, child-rearing and socialisation.

He traces modern man's infatuation with sports to the old hunting skills of picking up a moving target and bringing it down with spear, club or rock.

Similarly, he compares modern man's needs to go into a catatonic state on the sofa after work with ancient hunters' predilection for staring into the fire for hours once hunting was over.

A man's map-reading skills, he claimed, can be traced back to the survival necessity of being able to find your way back to the tribe after chasing game for hundreds of miles.

Mr Pease was at his funniest when describing a man's ability to do only one thing at a time.

"Ask a man questions while he's driving around a roundabout and he won't be able to get off it.

"He'll have to keep going round and round.

"And when a man stops a car to read a map, one of the first things he'll do is turn the radio down because he can't listen to that and find a new way home."

Modern-day women's attributes such as communication skills and multi-tasking ability, according to Mr Pease, is similarly rooted in Stone Age life, where women had to keenly observe everyone in the group to see if they were happy or angry.

There were a million other tasks beside, so the female brain adapted and is criss-crossed with nerve connections.

Mr Pease said women were much more ambidextrous than men, because gathering wild berries or crops would be inefficient with just one hand.

He also said that the women did everything in groups, accounting for modern-day women's need to go to the toilet "with a support group of friends".

Mr Pease said he watched in wonder as his wife edited a piece of work while watching TV and maintaining a conversation with her PA and a friend on the phone.

Attempting to back his theories up with some science, Mr Pease showed a couple of brain scans showing the areas of greatest activity during key skills.

In short, demands for judgement of speed, distance and spatial awareness are strongly featured in male brains and poorly in women.

Conversely, demands for communication and multi-tasking are strongly featured in female brains and poorly in men.

However, only four out of five people of both sexes conform to this pattern, so if you're a woman and a superb parallel parker or a man who can't shut up, you're probably the one in five.

Mr Pease claimed that people in business could communicate more effectively by bearing the male/ female traits in mind.

For women talking to men, he suggested focusing on one idea at a time and allowing a man time to respond without cutting him off.

For men he suggested not getting annoyed if your female colleague finished your sentence for you or spoke at the same time as you: she can speak and listen simultaneously, you can't!

He suggested couples could also benefit from his observations, particularly when it came to shopping.

"A man only goes shopping with a target in mind - like hunting.

"He would like to get there early, raid the shop, and get home. A woman can go shopping, explore many possibilities and return home without finding what she needs but still feeling as though she's had a good day.

"This would be hell for a man who would be consumed by failure."