For decades, mysterious tiles have appeared embedded in roads across Philadelphia and other cities, carrying the same cryptic message about resurrecting the dead on Jupiter. Known as the Toynbee Tiles, these handmade pieces have been discovered in streets across the United States and even in South America, yet the person who began placing them managed to remain officially unidentified.
The tiles have fascinated researchers because their creator managed to place them into busy streets without being identified. Even more puzzling is the meaning behind their strange message. While investigations have produced possible clues about the person responsible, the full story behind the Toynbee Tiles remains disputed.
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The Strange Message on the Tiles
Most of the earliest Toynbee Tiles contained a variation of the message:
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK’S 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER.
The tiles were generally around the size of a license plate and were made from materials including linoleum and asphalt-based substances. They were embedded into road surfaces, where repeated traffic helped press them deeper into the asphalt. Early examples appeared in Philadelphia and other American cities during the 1980s, while similar tiles were later discovered as far away as Buenos Aires, Santiago and Rio de Janeiro.
The wording appears to combine several references. “Toynbee” is commonly believed to refer to British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, while “2001” appears to reference Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film involves a mission to Jupiter, although the idea of resurrecting the dead on Jupiter does not actually occur in the movie.
Source: The Tantalizing Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
Who Created the Toynbee Tiles?
One of the earliest clues appeared in Philadelphia in 1983, when a man named James Morasco spoke to the media about an unusual theory involving the resurrection of dead matter on Jupiter. He reportedly connected his ideas to Arnold Toynbee and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Morasco also claimed to be associated with an organisation called the “Minority Association” during the contact.
Years later, artist and researcher Justin Duerr became deeply involved in investigating the tiles. His research, later featured in the 2011 documentary Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, led to a theory that a Philadelphia man named Severino “Sevy” Verna may have been behind the original tiles. The filmmakers suggested that James Morasco could have been an alias used by Verna, although this identification has never been conclusively proven.
Source: The Mysterious Toynbee Tiles
The Mystery Spreads
As more tiles appeared, their messages became increasingly elaborate. Some contained additional statements about the media, governments and alleged conspiracies, while others appeared to encourage people to create their own tiles. Their distribution also made the mystery much harder to explain, with examples turning up across numerous American cities and in South America.
Their widespread appearance raised another question: how were the tiles being transported and installed in so many different locations without the creator being identified? Some later tiles also contained longer and more unusual messages, suggesting that the project had developed beyond the original phrase. The growing number of examples made it difficult to determine whether they were all produced by the same person or whether others had begun copying the idea.
Is the Toynbee Tiles Mystery Solved?
The Toynbee Tiles case is still officially unsolved. The investigation presented in Resurrect Dead offers a detailed theory about the possible identity of their creator, but there is no definitive public proof establishing who made every original tile or exactly what motivated the project.
What makes the mystery unusual is that the tiles themselves have survived as physical clues for decades. Some have disappeared when streets were repaired or resurfaced, while others remain embedded in roads. Despite years of research, the strange message about Toynbee, Kubrick, resurrection and Jupiter continues to puzzle anyone who comes across one.
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