Not that I ever needed to use it, but it's there.
Google does know an indirect date of the page even if it's not written explicitly. The first crawling date should be saved and if no better indicator exists I'd assume they are using that timestamp.
I've been using it for many years by now, and have essentially given up on it recently.
I'd often set for past year/month and get articles, reviews, etc that were clearly dated many years previous. I don't know if the site are responsible for the gaming of search, or Google themselves, but the result is the same. I have some doubt that PC hardware review sites are gaming dates on their old articles, although I accept it could be in their interest to do so too.
This is pretty much the only reason why I still sometimes used Google - because Duck Duck Go only added this feature recently.
My account is around 15 years old and has gotten worse with time.