Your first sentence is completely wrong. All that is known is that the universe (immediately after the big bang) was a high temperature collection of photons and other stuff, all of which could interact. It took a little while (fraction of a second) to settle down into a plasma made up of photons, protons, neutrons, and electrons. Further along other light nuclides (H2, He, Li) formed. After about 300,000 years things cooled down enough that atoms formed.
All other elements were formed in stars, a much later development.