I agree with you there. Human beings are created in God's image. (As a Jew, I interpret that to mean spiritual image-- i.e., we have the ability to reason and to choose between good and evil-- not physical image.) It is my understanding, however, that God bestowed this gift on us through the process of evolution.
Biological, there may be similarities in appearance and even DNA (as I pointed out earlier, we share a lot of our DNA with a cabbage but aren't decended from them), but we can not breed with them nor is there any evidence that we ever did breed with them or a shared ancestor.
DNA similarities show common descent; the closer the similarity, the more recent the common ancestor. If you can disprove this, a lot of men being sued for child support will want to hire you.
There is really no evidence of a shared ancestor (bones don't show that they had ANY offspring period, just that they died), just a bunch of skulls (and skull portions) that scientists say this one is ape, this one is less ape, this one appears to be taking on the shape of being a little more human, etc.,
People (and apes) don't just magically appear; they are born from parents. As we go further back in time, we find the bones of human beings becoming progressively less upright; we find their brains becoming progressively smaller; and we find their teeth becoming progressively more ape-like.
I don't know precisely at what point on the evolutionary scale our ancestors became endowed with the Divine image and acquired an immortal soul; I don't think the bones will ever tell us that. (They do give us some hints, though-- at a certain point in the fossil record, the hominid bones start to show signs of deliberate burial.) Some things religion can answer and science can't; other things, religion can't answer and science can.
I see the firmament as the separation between the physical and the spiritual realms - not a geometric boundary in space/time.
Additionally, because Genesis begins by saying He created heaven and earth (and because of Christian passages which you would not embrace) --- we ought to view Genesis 1 as speaking to the creation of ”all that there is” and not just the physical realm.
As with the Temple and the Ark, things which happen in the physical realm are a model of the real thing which exists in eternity. I see the Garden of Eden in the same light – the real Garden is paradise.
Therefore, Genesis 2 and 3 speak of events which are concurrently transpiring in eternity – culminating with Adam and Eve being banished to mortality. That's when I see Adamic man entering the physical realm in the form of a human being. That constitutes the Fall, when death entered the physical realm, i.e. spiritual Adamic man must now die. What made the difference between Adamic man and all the other men who were on earth was the neshama – the breath of God.
At that point the narrative of Genesis, the aspect changes to Adamic man and therefore, time passing becomes relative to our space/time coordinates. About 6000 years have transpired on Adam’s clock.
If we follow the archeological evidence – man’s desire to achieve immortality, the use of tools, personal adornment, community living, commerce, weapons, star gazing, household "gods", "super" men and the ilk – all commence and flow along the Adamic man timeline and geography.
And at about 2350 b.c. (which matches approximately the time of Noah) - virtually every center of such “civilization” in the entire world was wiped out by a catastrophic event. Some attribute this to cosmic debris, some to earthquakes – but it is characterized by massive flooding and destruction, even changing fertile ground to desert.