Across the United States and even as far as South America, plaques bearing a strange message can be found embedded in the street. Their message? “Toynbee idea in movie 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter”.

Well alright then.

Exactly where the tiles came from, who created them, and what their messages mean aren't clear, but some have tried to tackle the mystery. So, what do we know about the Toynbee Tiles?

What are the Toynbee Tiles?

The peculiar plaques are known as the Toynbee Tiles and the first reports of their arrival on the streets of planet Earth date back to the 1980s. They’re widely considered a kind of guerilla street art, which considering people practice shoefiti isn’t all that strange.

What is strange is the cryptic nature of the message they carry. While “Toynbee idea in movie 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter,” is the most common, some also reference Kubrick, as in Stanley, leading to the assumption that the tiles are referencing 2001: A Space Odyssey. If a connection exists between Kubrick’s work and the tiles' namesake, the British historian and philosopher Arnold J Toynbee, it’s not immediately clear, but then isn’t all art up for interpretation?

Where have Toynbee Tiles appeared?

Toynbee Tiles have been installed in streets across over two dozen states in the US, and several cities in South America where they're thought to be the work of copycats. They have sometimes been embedded in bold locations, slap bang in the middle of a crossing that must have made for a hazardous canvas. However, the unique approach to laying the tiles actually employs the help of passing cars.

“First, a message is carved on a piece of flexible, not brittle, linoleum,” explain the makers of Resurrect Dead: The Mystery Of The Toynbee Tiles. “Two pieces of tar paper are used to cover the linoleum like bread covering the filling of a sandwich. The linoleum is also smothered with Elmer's glue and asphalt crack filler. The whole concoction is then laid down in the asphalt of an intersection while concealed by the tar paper.”

“The tile is ‘baked’ into the ground by the sun's heat, which liquefies the asphalt ever so slightly. Pressure from car and foot traffic further impress the tile into the ground. By the time the top layer of tar paper is removed, the tile will have become deeply embedded and will be impossible to remove without fully repaving the street.”

Who was the Toynbee Tiler?

The identity of the Toynbee Tiler remains up for debate, though a reclusive resident in Philadelphia has been the subject of much speculation. To date, the person’s family has maintained that they had nothing to do with it, but the proximity of most of the tiles to Philadelphia would support the idea that the person responsible is local. Filmmaker Jon Foy said that a copy of the film was sent to the alleged tiler, but the film crew didn’t receive a response.

A similar mystery got everyone talking back in 2020 when, in an already baffling year, a bunch of monoliths began cropping up – sometimes containing cryptic messages. The mystery was then revived four years later when the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department found another one out in the desert. Like the Toynbee Tiler, the culprit(s) behind the monolith mystery haven’t been confirmed, although people have their theories.