I think you are on to something and I think those civilizations were here and were destroyed in the time frame between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. What happened in that era could have been apocalyptical for Earth and the solar system in general.
I heard that theory from an elder in a church I went to some 40+ years ago.
He knew Hebrew and said there was a change in tense from verse 1 to verse 2 that indicated that verse 1 indicated creation of something new, never created before, where verse 2 was indicating a recreating, or restoring of something previously created then destroyed.
He told me that initially earth was a place of great mineral beauty.