Toynbee Tiles

Recently I watched the documentary Resurrect Dead, which is a gripping tale of four men's mission to unravel the mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.  So what are the Toynbee tiles, and what makes them so mysterious?

In the mid-eighties, strange tiles started appearing on the ground in and around Philadelphia, Washington DC, and New York, bearing the message:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOVIE '2001'
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.

Many have interpreted this to be referring to an obscure conspiracy theory that it is possible for humanity to be reborn (resurrected), after death, on the planet Jupiter. Confused? Keep reading.

The 'Toynbee idea' most likely refers to the writings of Arnold Toynbee, who wrote that:

"Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body... Someone who accepts—as I myself do, taking it on trust—the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit."

This same principle is discussed in Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the main character dies but then is reborn at the end. The movie also discusses human colonization on Jupiter.

The same idea had been discussed in a play written by David Mamet, called 4 A.M. In the play, a caller calls in to a radio show (supposedly inspired by a real caller on Larry King, but this was never proven.) to try to spread word of his ideas based from Toynbee's idea of resurrection, and the possibility of rebirth and colonization on Jupiter as suggested in 2001. Mamet later claimed that his story was not based on a real caller, but was merely a product of his imagination. We still don't know is this is true, but it seems too large a coincidence to be unrelated to the strange Toynbee tiles. Mamet became convinced that the tiles were created as a tribute to his play, and was very pleased with them.

Other tiles appeared with variations on this message, and one block of four squares in the middle of the road in Philadelphia told about the tiler's conspiracy, stating:

John Knight Ridder is the Philadelphia thug hellion Jew who'd hated this movements guts- for years- takes money from the Mafia to make the Mafia look good in his newspapers so he has the Mafia in his back pocket. John Knight sent the Mafia to murder me in May 1991 [illegible] journalists [illegible] then gloated to my face about death and Knight Ridder great power to destroy. In fact John Knight went into hellion binge of joy over Knight-Ridder's great power to destroy.

I secured house with blast doors and fled the country in June 1991.

NBC attorneys journalists and security officials at Rockefeller Center fraudulently under the "Freedom of Information Act" all [illegible] orders NBC executives got the U.S. federal district attorney's office who got FBI to get Interpol to establish task force that located me in Dover England.

Which back home Inquirer got union goons from their own employees union to [illegible] down a "sports journalist." Who with ease bashed in lights and windows of neighborhood car- as well as men outside my house. They are stationed there still waiting for me.

NBC CBS group "W" Westinghouse, Time, Time Warner, Fox, Universal all of the "Cult of the Hellion" each one were Much worse than Knight-Ridder ever was[,] mostly hellion Jews.

When K.Y.W and NBC executives told John Knight the whole coven gloated in joyous fits on how their Soviet pals found a way to turn it into a...

There the message abruptly ends. 

Another tile stated, "I am only one man," which led investigators of the mystery on a hunt to discover who the one man was.

One tile on the ground in South America had an address in Philadelphia on it, which, some believe, is where the tiler lives. Neighbors have described him as quiet and shy, and that he had a car with a large antenna for jamming nearby televisions (there are several reports of having the same strange Toynbee message come over people's TVs). His car also had the floor taken out on one side, which explains how he could drop his tiles in the middle of crowded streets.  But no one has any concrete proof that this is who the real tiler was, and evidently he no longer lives there. The current residents know nothing about the tiles and are annoyed when people come to their house to ask about them.

I have also heard that there is a Toynbee tile located in the city where I live, which I am going to investigate further.  I don't know if it is an original tile (after they became more well-known, many imitation tiles sprung up, and most of the original tiles have disappeared thanks to repaving and traffic wear.) But i will certainly check it out and post photos of it as soon as possible.

Whatever the real story is, I definitely have a new favorite conspiracy theory.

Photos: Top: The four-panel conspiracy tiles

Bottom: A common Toynbee tile with a small robot that appeared on or near many tiles.