As a relatively new Everythingian, unless you only look at the contents of the "New Writeups" list, it seems like the vast majority of E2's contents was written in either of the years 2000 or 2001. For a while I thought that this was just because E2 is over the hill, past its prime, drifting slowly into its Autumn Years. Perhaps this is true to an extent, but I don't think this is the main cause of the phenomenon.
I think the main reason is that after that first node from the homepage, one navigates primarily with the softlinks. The softlinks are ordered by their frequency of use, and so older nodes are more likely to be linked to old nodes. Older nodes have had a head start on the newer ones, they've had more time to gain ground, and these relationships are reinforced every time someone uses them. Old nodes' softlinks are deeply ingrained, so of course old nodes will link to old nodes far more often, and any new nodes will most likely be at the bottom of the list, where fewer people look, so the old softlinks at the top of the list will stay at the top. When old nodes are more likely to link to old nodes, all it takes is a single click on a node from last year to set you on the path to the year 2000.
It's like a randomly vibrating ratchet: there's no net force, but movements are only cumulative in one direction, so there's a net movement. OK, so that's not the best analogy, but you know what I'm saying. There's a net movement backwards through the E2 database, and unless you're actively opposing it, you'll end up in the same place every day. The new nodes are there, you're just less likely to see them.
This could also be because all the good nodes have already been written.