Jeremiah described a desolate earth in 4:23-26:  "I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light,  I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.  I beheld, and, lo, there was no man and all the birds of the heavens were fled.  I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger."

Is Jeremiah quoting Genesis 1:2.  It sounds like it.  It also sounds like God's anger prompted him to "Break down" the earth.

Had men been there?  If cities were broken down,  someone had built them.  Birds fled.  Fruit no longer grew on trees.  It sounds like there had been animals, trees, men, cities.  What does this mean?

Did this happen between Gen. l:1 and Gen. 1:2?   God doesn't tell us.  So there isn't much use in speculating.  Archeologists have found very old human bones.  How old?  Well, that depends on methods of dating--which are not very exact.  (More on this later.)

If we use the genealogy of the Biblical account, Adam would have been created around 6000 years ago.  At most 10,000.  But....this is much younger than the carbon dating on human bones that have been uncovered.  Is there a contradiction?  Personally I don't think so.  I will try to simplify all this as we progress through the Biblical account.

As far as I am concerned, the story of Genesis begins when God starts over.  When the sun breaks through the darkness and light allows trees to grow, birds to fly--when "The earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: (it was already there--waiting on God to do whatever he was going to do), and it was so." Gen. 1:12

Gen. 1:13  "And the evening and the morning were the third day."