Yes, we had to remove the publication date from our archives because Google was heavily down ranking it. We left an “updated” date but are probably going to remove that as well. I fought hard against this until it became clear there really was no other option.
I can only assume "old" pages are down-ranked more by Google than those with no date at all.
Maybe the content date is in a metadata tag somewhere, I've not bothered to check yet. But if it is why not make it visible on the page as well?