While I don't know the more complicated views of time; most people think of time as a temporal distance between two events with in a certain point of reference. In reality time is disposable. Your only reference of the past is information written for you to read in the "future". If the information gets destroyed, misplaced, or corrupted you just altered the past better than any time traveler ever could (always back up your system
).
Think of this some people get dementia with age, and loose the ability to make new memories predictably. If you don't tell them what time it is they never know. My great aunt is always asking the time to compensate for limited memory, and is usually followed by "Who are you?". I am not using her for proof, but as almost an allegory. The present becomes the perpetual fact.
Imagine now if you could reduce all forms of memory and record keeping to zero. Time would cease to exist. In fact only creatures based on simple cause and effect reactions could survive. Maybe that's the sole reason the first creatures were so simple and limited. Not because they are more primitive, but because the concept of memory had not manifested yet on the biological levels. Further questions do impart more "blueskyberry thinking" if you ask; does the universe have a cosmic memory? I think astronomers would say yes. Since most things they look at are older than any human record keeping system and/or biological recording system.