Poor research produces a poor article, below the standard we should expect here on Hacker News. In one example, the article author writes, "It's also during this time that we begin to see markings that look like writing on pottery. Over a period of just a couple of centuries, these crude marks evolved quickly into an alphabet that we still can't decipher." First of all, "alphabet" is surely the wrong word, as that refers to a specific kind of writing system that the Harappan script most likely was not. Indeed, there is considerable controversy over whether the Harrapan script is writing at all, that is a representation of language, rather than proto-writing, for example markings of ruling families or the like. (Those are stages of development of not-yet-writing attested in other centers of ancient civilization.) As the article correctly notes, there is no evidence of a successor civilization to the Indus Valley civilization, so at the very least we have no sure evidence of any linguistic affiliations of any use of Harappan script for writing. The attested later historical development of writing in India (which flourished at the time of the emperor Ashoka) is based on script forms from the ancient Near East.

AFTER EDIT: As usual, I would be happy to hear a rationale for the disagreement that is evidently being expressed regarding this comment. Please show your capacity to teach me (and onlookers) something. I'll mention here that I have studied a variety of other languages (those are disclosed in my Hacker News user profile), including Chinese, and I have made specialized study of the origins of writing around the world. That's my basis for judging the plausibility of various claims about the ancient Harappan inscriptions. A book on that topic I highly recommend, because it is written by very knowledgeable historical linguists, is The World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. There has been a little bit of new work on Harappan inscriptions since that book was published, with several claims and counterclaims by competing scholars, but no settled demonstration that the Harappan inscriptions are writing at all, and certainly no settled demonstration of what they are writing about, if anything (as the article submitted here acknowledges).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Writing-Systems-Peter-Daniels/d...