Background
Peter W Littman (1931-2022), was born in England, but spent the latter part of his life mostly in southern France, Monaco and French speaking Switzerland.
A successful accountant and auditor by profession, PWL felt drawn to the many unresolved questions in the realm of ancient and pre-ancient history.
He was initially inspired by Dr Immanuel Velikovsky’s groundbreaking but controversial book Worlds in Collision. It seems likely that he first set out to test and challenge Velikovsky’s claims about relatively recent cataclysmic cosmic events.
In this pursuit he developed his own approach to analysing the Gematria and Isopsephy (letters having numerical values) in the Bible and other texts pertinent to the ancient world, and he concluded that the Ancients did indeed embrace a world view largely consistent with Velikovsky’s main hypothesis that the world has seen several severe cosmic events or catastrophs within the time frame of humanity’s collective memory.
Whilst accepting that this by no means proves that the specific astrophysical events postulated by Velikovsky actually happened, he thought the fact that the entire ancient world seemed to regard these events as obvious indicated that there might be a common creation scenario in all ancient cultures. While looking for proof of this, he gradually came to the realisation that there had existed an Ante-Antiquity Belief System that went much further than recording the Earth’s passage through cosmic cataclysms. And that this System appeared to have reached a high degree of perfection, while providing a sense of harmony between Humanity and the World/Universe.
The System proved to be elusive, with each uncovered level leading to another with further and even deeper implications, and also due to alterations caused by human action. Many historical figures saw it in their interest to obscure, hide or pervert the System as it had been handed down to them, making it gradually unrecognisable and effectively extinct.
On numerous occasions PWL thought he had reached the point when he could publish his findings, only to pull back as he discovered yet another path that required exploring. At the end of his life he understood that he could no longer cope with the sheer magnitude of the task, and thus took steps for the work to continue after his death.
He established The Perseverance Foundation with his private funds in such a way that he had no personal control over or access to the money. Thus charitable foundation status was achieved. The Foundation is managed according to its charter by a Board of Directors, and advised by two Protectors appointed for life by PWL.
The Foundation has initiated and funded the Ante-Antiquity Project to ensure that the pioneering work of PWL is preserved and continued.
Our Dublin research team is conducting a systematic cataloguing of the Peter Littman Corpus (PLC), his collection of 40,000+ tightly handwritten pages. This process involves identifying key words/numbers on each page, tagging them into a data base, as well as digitising each page.
In the next phase, which now runs in parallel with ongoing cataloguing, the PLC content is analysed, and the most pertinent parts transcribed into clear text documents by help of TRANSKRIBUS®, customised AI.
Having extracted contents of particular interest, our team will publish themed articles on this website.
We posted a brief introduction onto AAS cosmology in May 2026 (available under Published Matrrial), and a deeper analysis of the subject is scheduled for December 2026.
The original handwritten PWL pages will be available in digitised form to approved researchers in a separate section of the Library.
Further steps are envisaged once the Material has been analysed and critiqued. The Foundation will from time to time reach out to institutions of higher learning as well as individuals of specific prominence in their field. We also welcome initiatives from those who would like to help us advance our objectives. Please use the contact forms provided on this website.