Among the popular ideas now in circulation about how our primeval cave-man brain influences modern behavior is the theory that when we go shopping, women “forage” and men “hunt.” You know, just as they did back in Paleolithic times, when women brought home mushrooms (and a new mink pelt), and men brought home a mastodon (and a high-definition wide-screen cave painting).

As it turns out, the most current ethnographic data doesn’t back it up. The consumer upheavals of the last decade have produced plenty of nonstereotypical behavior: women hunting down cars and electronics and men foraging for fashionable clothing and housewares. Could we have made a huge evolutionary leap forward, like the X-Men?

“All those old differences have become so insignificant,” said Marshal Cohen, the chief analyst at NPD Group, the retail research firm. “Women are collectors, and men forage now as well as hunt.” Another micro piece of evidence: a somewhat spirited new entry on the men’s wear scene — what might be called the over-the-topcoat — suggests that men can think as elastically about clothes as women do.

Traditional wisdom has it that a man’s winter overcoat should be classic and even sedate, and that a man hunts down an overcoat the way he might hunt for a sofa, by stalking a solid, timeless specimen that goes with everything, whether in his closet or in his living room. If you want a garment with flair, the thinking goes, stalk a wild sport coat.