![]() ![]() Upon closer inspection, I discovered it to be a “Toynbee Idea” tile – freshly placed and only minutes old. On my way home I noticed something unusual in the street. I had gone to my local convenience store for a snack around 4:00 A.M., noticing nothing unusual. The highlight of my search for answers to this mystery occurred one Sunday night of this previous winter. ![]() One Toynbee Tile enthusiast has claimed that a freshly laid tile was once found and examined: Some people also suppose that he is European, given that Kubrick and Toynbee are both English, and because one of the paranoid-ranting plaques indicates that he is/was hiding in Dover, England. And given the diverse locales where the tiles can be found, he has the means and money to travel. ![]() He is certainly creative, as the messages’ delivery system indicates, and he must be a patient and methodical man to have invested the time in making these 130 or so tiles by hand. Either this man is disturbed, or he has a bizarre sense of humor. There is only one known intersection between the works of Toynbee and Kubrick, and it’s pretty circumstantial: Toynbee’s writings spoke of a man named Zoroaster who conceived the idea of monotheism, and this name also occurs in the title of the famous 2001: A Space Odyssey theme song it’s entitled “Thus Spoke Zoroaster.”Īnother Toynbee TileDue to strong similarity in craftsmanship and writing style, these tiles are most likely the work of a single individual (in the interest of conserving slashes and pronouns, we’ll assume this individual is a male). Some of the tiles mention Kubrick, the filmmaker responsible for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was a movie that made implications that a man was reborn on a mission to Jupiter, not exactly resurrected. Toynbee, a religious historian born in England in 1889. ![]() The tiles all mention “Toynbee,” most likely Arnold J. Somehow, someone is managing to embed these tiles into public roads– some of which are busy 24/7– without being spotted. To date, about 130 tiles have been discovered. Some have even shown up in South America in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Similar tiles have appeared in many US cities, including Washington DC, Pittsburgh, New York City, Baltimore, Boston, and many more. So, he created a website devoted to the mysterious tiles, and in doing so learned that it is not just a local phenomenon. So Bill started asking around about these tiles, but nobody knew anything about their origin or meaning. Obey.” Some were accompanied by lengthy, paranoid diatribes about the newsmedia, jews, and the mafia. They were generally about the size of a license plate, and each had some variation of the same strange message: “TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUbricK’s 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER.” They varied a bit in color and arrangement, but they were all made of an unidentifiable hard substance, and many had footnotes as strange as the message itself, such as “Murder every journalist, I beg you,” and “Submit. In 1992, a chap in Philadelphia by the name of Bill O’Neill starting noticing strange tiles randomly embedded in local roads. Enjoy, and please write in with your own stories about the tiles.įrom the magazine Damn Interesting, 25 September 2005 I then came across this article, which I reproduce for you below. Only a few days ago, I noticed that a fresh “Toynbee Tile” had appeared on a corner near my workplace. Other distractions soon absorbed us, and none of our frenzied talk of the Toynbee tiles came to anything. Our meager leads petered out, and we were left scratching our heads. My brother, a scientist, has held a long fascination with conspiracy theories (he does not hold them himself), and pointed me toward the “unified field theory” of conspiracies, a book called Behold a Pale Horse by William Milton Cooper, which included discussion of an alleged plan to ignite the gas giant Jupiter into a second sun with a nuclear warhead. Clarke, even watched the Kubrick film again. It sent us back to the works of historian Arnold Toynbee, and we read Arthur C. What could it mean? We sat up nights drinking and pushing ideas back and forth. Some spoke of sightings in London and Paris. My friends and I began to spot the strange tiles on other corners, and I later found some in Union Square in New York City. Had I stumbled upon a sinister system of communication embedded in my otherwise unremarkable daily routine? Where would it lead? This was before the internet became the great well of information (and, potentially, disinformation) that it is today. How could it fail to do so? As a young man with an abiding interest in the likes of Thomas Pynchon, I was gripped. For a moment, I inclined my head and saw the strangest thing: a colorful tile somehow attached to the pavement stating “Toynbee Idea in Movie 2001 Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter.” This intrigued me. Years ago, I stood at a corner in Philadelphia waiting to cross. ![]()
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