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Between 1894 and 1898, cartoonist Émile Gravelle published 4 issues of a peculiar periodical entitled The Natural State and the share of the proletariat in civilization. He declared his hatred for civilization and described prehistoric life as an era of happiness and plenty. Soon his calling for a return to nature entailed the creation of a group of “Libertarian Naturians” which gathered together a few anarchists at the Butte Montmartre. The way in which the latter relayed Gravelle’s anti-modernity criticism and his promise for a return to paradise lost leads us to interrogate the mobilizing force contained, under certain circumstances, by contemporary forms of the Golden Age myth.