"This She-Wolf Is a Reward to My Kinsman."

Did you think the first known sentence in the history of the English language would be more romantic? Perhaps something like, "Thou hath killeth my father henceforth I whilst killeth you!"? Or more practical, like, "Churneth thou butter with more haste, woman!" Nope. According to Bill Bryson in The Mother Tongue, "This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman," is the first known example of Anglo-Saxon writing in Britan. Hmm. Apparently it was inscribed on a small medallion about the size of a fifty-cent coin and was found three decades ago buried in a field. It seems that back then the payback policy wasn't you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, bro; it was you help me work my fields and I'll give you a wild killer female dog that will scratch you all over and it even has a gift tag, bro. Interesting. Although, if the Anglo-Saxons defined she-wolf in any way resembling Shakira's definition, that might not have been so bad. Anyway, The Mother Tongue is so full of interesting facts and details about English that it sent me on a web search to see what else I could find out there about the origins of my mother tongue (and my mother's tongue). One of the results was this hilarious cartoon version of the history of English, which I think linguists, clients, and friends alike will appreciate and perhaps even learn from: