God created the Universe, Heavens, and Earth. Time of this is not specified. What was the Earth like long long ago? Maybe God had another creation in the past like Dinosaurs and such then destroyed them and started over like he did with Noah's Flood. Its interesting but not really relevant to God's plan.
God fashioned the Earth in 6 days, set up the seasons, day and night. Fashioned the land and seas, creatures, then Humans. First ones being Adam and Eve. I believe this was recent and this Era of creation is the most important and relevant to us since we live in it. They disobeyed God in the Garden and were banished, now we have suffering and plagues in this world. It got really bad during the first 1000 years of humanity, with fallen angels mating with humans producing giants, that God had to hit the reset button and create the flood to start over again with a clean slate starting with Noah.
The Flood is proven by archeology, there is a lot of ancient evidence of humans being visted by fallen angels which people mistake them as aliens. Giant skeletons have been found.
How can this be figurative?