A Beginner's Guide to Toynbee Tiles - Part I

This much we know for sure:

1. The tiles always show up embedded in the asphalt of intersections
2. They all contain, with minimal variation, the following blurb:
   
         TOYNBEE IDEA
         IN KUBRICK'S 2001
         RESURRECT DEAD
         ON PLANET JUPITER
3. The writing is somehow carved into (or out of, in some cases) linoleum, which is then coated on the bottom with asphalt glue and wrapped in tar paper. The tiles become embedded in street by way of repeated runnings-over during the normal flow of traffic.

That's where the certainty ends. However, there is no shortage of intrigue. Let's take, for example, the noted and somewhat controversial historian Arnold J. Toynbee. His name fills the first line of the cryptic message, but what "idea" is being referred to? The message board on Justin Duerr's website, resurrectdead.com, contains a quote from Toynbee's own Experiences:

If this is the truth, 'matter' and 'spirit' may each be infinite in its own dimension; and every human being will be a point at which these two perhaps infinite entities intersect each other. We do not understand what the relation between them is. I suspect that their apparent duality may be an illusion produced by some feature in the structure of our minds that diffracts an indivisible reality into fractions which we do not know how to re-combine.

Also from Experiences and, as you'll see in a moment, just as interesting:

If extra-sensory perception is a proven reality (and I am convinced by first-hand evidence that it is), its existence indicates that a human being may, after all, not be the psychosomatic monolith that he appears to be in the light of present-day medical and psychological research. Human nature is still mysterious, and the mystery extends, beyond human nature, to the whole Universe, in both its spiritual and physical aspect, and to the ultimate reality in and behind and beyond the phenomena.

How does this connect to Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? Well, the characters journey to Jupiter, encounter a monolith (the quote above does refer to mankind as a "psychosomatic monolith") and one of them does end up sort of, well, ghost-like near the end (echoing Toynbee's keen belief in the spiritual and physical "seperateness" of humanity).

Technically, though, no one actually gets raised from the dead in the movie.

If that's not enough, noted playwright David Mamet wrote a (very) short play in 1983 called Four AM, detailing a conversation between a radio host and a seemingly delusional character who mentions raising the dead on Jupiter, as per the movie and Toynbee's writings. The conversation is brief and ends with the idea being logically destroyed by the host.

Now, in the same year (which was also graced by the birth of your humble author), the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story by Clark DeLeon outlining the ideas of Philly native James Morasco, which were practically identical to those of Mamet's character. Morasco, it turns out, was a real person. He claimed that he headed the "Minority Association" and was originally the prime suspect for the first wave of tiles (that's right, they seem to come in two distinct flavors, one more recent and slightly different in materials and methods). He is no longer considered the tiler, as he is dead and still, they appear.

Morasco and his fictional counterpart are both part of a clandestine group of like-minded people and share very similar ideas about the historian and the movie involved. Both did, in fact, surface in the same year. However, Mamet's play was not published until 1985. So the answer to the question of who came first, the crank or the character, seems to be the character. And so the plot thickens...

The tiles, which show up in several seemingly random US cities and a few foreign ones, have been extensively researched by the aforementioned Duerr and his fellow enthusiasts, one of whom wrote this article. In it, the author outlines the stunning finding that the Philadelphia address that appears only in one tile, and in Santiago, Chile, no less, was once the home of a Conrail worker named Railroad Joe. It turns out, he goes on to say, that all the tiled cities (except Kansas City but including Santiago) lay somewhere along Conrail's route. Now that's very eeeen-teresting.

Also, be sure to check out Justin Duerr's web site, resurrectdead.com, where he outlines his own extensive research and the preparations of his documentary on the subject.

In Part II, we'll clean up the mess a bit, introduce some more juicy tidbits and include an interview with the esteemed Mr. Duerr.

Until then, visit Toynbee.net for a list of tile locations and keep your eyes open.

Image from Flickr user otfrom.