More importantly than a git repository, you might have archives (a .tar or equivalent) of these software projects, and might want to unpack them while preserving the timestamps contained within these archives.
Unix did not exist before 1970. Neither did tar. There are no tar files with files with timestamps before 1970 _unless_ you've used `touch -t 195001010000` or `utime(2)` or `futimes(3)` to set the files' time to before 1970. That seems pretty unlikely.
If I create a new archive format today and use it to archive the contents of my disk or whatever USB stick I find do you not thing it might end up containing files with timestamps before today?
