Why was the headline changed? The original headline [1] used the headline from the article, "Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing". For some reason it was changed either by the author or by a moderator to a meaning that is completely different.
That is a puzzler. The OP submitted the article with the original article title (that's how I saw the submission when it was a new submission). The guideline here
"If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link anyway.
"If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate '10 Ways To Do X' to 'How To Do X,' and '14 Amazing Ys' to 'Ys.' Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. 'The 5 Platonic Solids.'
"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."
The last paragraph quoted above appears to be the newest revision to the Hacker News guidelines, just a few months old, and perhaps that guideline revision is so new that some curators here have habits that go back to an older version of the guidelines, which suggested more rationales for retitling articles on the part of submitters or curators. I really like original article titles whenever possible, myself,
[1] http://i.imgur.com/agIfl.png