Don't rule out the "apparent age" theory in the Young Earth Creation explanation. When God created the first man, he didn't begin with an embryo but a fully grown man, ditto the woman. The mistake some people make is that they think they NEED to explain Scripture based upon whatever the science at the time can determine. What we know is that man's understanding of the natural world is limited just as the words used to describe that understanding. "Facts" determined by scientists can and do change. God's word is eternal. It stands REGARDLESS of man's current knowledge. Our goal should be we believe what God says by faith and we don't lean unto our own understanding.
The way I look at it, the Bible is like the solar system. The core is our sun, a bright star that the smaller planets all revolve around through gravity.
The resurrection of Christ is the sun...the core that all the other Bible stories revolve around. All things before the resurrection point towards it and everything that comes afterwards points back to it.
The furthest story from the resurrection is Adam and Eve. It’s like Pluto...so far out there we can’t decide if it’s a planet or not. It’s murky way out there in the distance. Adam and Eve and how they connect to anthropological evidence for man’s origins is like that too...it’s just so far back in time that there are many different interpretations of just what it means.
In the end, it doesn’t matter which interpretation is correct as long as Jesus still rose from the dead, which redeems mankind.
Not that I reject Genesis...on the contrary, I believe Adam and Eve and the Eden are certainly historical, as reading Jesus’ words in the New Testament clearly support that. I just don’t know WHEN it happened, and I think obsessing over the literal point it time really misses the point of the Bible.
A young Earth Creationist once challenged me by accusing me of denying Genesis, “the foundation.” Puh-leeze. The resurrection is clearly the foundation of Christian faith!