What is the "Date" column in Windows 7 explorer? It matches no date column from Windows XP explorer

I can't get myself to understand what the default "Date" column in Windows 7 Explorer is. It's not the creation date really and it's not the modified date ... What is it?

Anyone knows what Microsoft had in mind with this other than trying to confuse its users? There must be some thought to it in terms of its relevance and usability.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

The "Date" column takes the earlier of "Date created" and "Date modified", ignoring "Date accessed", unless there is a "special" date field such as an Exif-header in a JPG, which takes precedence no matter whether it is before or after other dates present... just as @Richard guessed:

The reasoning seems to be that when you copy a file, the "Date created" of the file copy is the current date, while the "Date modified" is carried over from the original file. So in this case the "Date Modified" contains more information about when the content was created/changed, so might be more relevant to some users than the date the file was copied.

If the file is a photo from a camera, the vague 'date' column shows the datetime on the camera as that is the time it thinks is the real 'created' date. NOT the time on the PC when it was taken.

The default date column here is "Modified Date" and I cannot (quickly) see anywhere it does not match that.

Noting that for newly created files the last modified date is the creation date; and files copied in can keep there modified date so have a modified date before their creation date.