If I had to guess, I might think that this is the only version that has existed, but such an assessment is not made from the point of view of experience.

The information regarding release history is available in many places, so there's no need to guess. You might try either the Changes file or the CPANTS releases tab for example.

As to which minimum version to specify, well that's up to you. Wider adoption comes from less stringent criteria but the newest versions should have fewer outstanding bugs and (as is the case here with support for the "model" parameter) more features. I would suggest that you pick one philosophy (newest available or oldest supported) and apply the same to all your dependencies for the sake of consistency.