We didn't need sorted dates before we started using unstructured media to store information.
Hand-written accounting journals, day books, have date ordering built into their physical substrate. It didn't matter how dates were given orally (some places: "today is the 23rd of June 1844"; others: "it's June 23, 1844 today"); nor did it matter that this ordering was transcribed onto the paper, using month numbers rather than the names of the months.
Now we do need to sort dates, so let's turn Japanese.
Hand-written accounting journals, day books, have date ordering built into their physical substrate. It didn't matter how dates were given orally (some places: "today is the 23rd of June 1844"; others: "it's June 23, 1844 today"); nor did it matter that this ordering was transcribed onto the paper, using month numbers rather than the names of the months.
Now we do need to sort dates, so let's turn Japanese.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Japa...