Starting from the primal meaning of the word "savage" as denoting "from the trees", this book offers a synoptic account of human development, from isolated hunters to the beginnings of community, or "civilization". From the beginning, a necessary opposition emerged between the savage and the civilized, between those who lived in the forest and those who collected in groups to protect themselves from, and to dominate, their environment. As the book ranges outward from this early position, it demonstrates how civilization, the power of groups who had developed language and exploited the earth's riches, came to prevail over looser, more tribal societies. With the exploitation of nature - and the peoples who remained closer to it - so attitudes to the savage were modified by the institutions of civilization. This book details these attitudes as they were expressed by successive civilizations and their ecclesiastical and philosophic spokesmen. But views on the relationship between the earth's inhabitants entailed other views, less carefully considered, on the environments they inhabited. Colonization brought diseases that destroyed populations; complacency about the progress of civilization has turned to anxiety about the degree to which the planet has been despoiled. Everywhere, the city as metropolis is dying, and longing for the lost wilderness is returning. "The Naked Savage" sees the emerging Green movement as serving, for the moment, only to frustrate and delay the inexorable march of industralisation. It is a plea for a change in our outlook, both on man's place in nature and on the true nature of civilization itself. The author's first novel is "Breaking of Bumbo" and his subsequent books include biographies of Jack London and John Ford, "The Albion Trilogy", "War Like a Wasp" and "The Need to Give".