I may be mistaken, but from what I know, historical materialism was a concept in the philosophy of some well known people from socialist political theory, like Marx and Engels, that society was entirely determined by material conditions, and that society was materially predestined to progress through different stages in the modes of production,
First primitive communism, then feudalism, then capitalism, then socialism
The idea was proved wrong by the observation of how society developed and empirical evidence of other societies, other than the one they lived in, that those societies did not develop that way, or skipped stages, or had capitalism imposed on them by colonisation,
Evolution may be the same, I have not studied evolutionary biology, but I believe I have a lot of reasons to believe creation, at least for humans, happened as the bible says it did, due to my experiences and those of others, and the fact that for me, and for many others, materialism, which I believe, although I could be wrong and theistic evolution could have happened, evolution implies, is a spiritual death, like taking a fish out of water, that is how I think and feel in a materialist worldview, I'm not getting out of water and leaving the light because a part of the currently discovered science thinks something that I believe may oppose it,
Edit: And I forgot but I should really two mentions two more things:
1. The Bible does not say how old the earth is
The Bible's statements do not support any age of the earth, because we do not know how much time Adam and Eve spent in Eden, from God creating creation until humanity was kicked out on earth
2. If the statement that because our bodies have similar DNA to that of other beings points to us having a common ancestor, is an indication of how strong the evidence for the origin of humans and animals being in evolution is, then I am very unconvinced, since that can mean a common creator using the same principles of science that He created to make physical bodies
Like a rock and a diamond being made up of some similar particles in a way being set up differently is not evidence against God, neither is similar DNA
Edit: Also about historical materialism, again I may be wrong, but this is what I have heard, the reason historical materialism was for a while believed to be true, is because they had a good understanding of how capitalism appeared, but very little anthropological data