Usually it’s the opposite, where the primary twist is that the seemingly fantastical setting of the story is actually a version of our world after some kind of apocalyptic catastrophe.

1. Middle-Earth (Tolkien’s Legendarium) -  The setting of The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is implied to be our very own Earth but in the far distant past, which is slowly losing its magical charm as the Age of Men begins and the world we‘re more familiar with gradually starts to take form

2. The Hyborian Age and Atlantis (Conan the Barbarian/Kull of Atlantis) - Both stories take place on a prehistoric version of Earth, with the latter taking place thousands of years before the former. Similar to Middle-Earth, it’s implied that magic is slowly but surely disappearing from the world to begin the historically documented era we’re used to

3. Earthdawn - This RPG is meant to be a prequel to Shadowrun, a different RPG that takes place in a futuristic cyberpunk world where magic returns to Earth and begins the “Sixth World” as part of a cyclical rise and fall of magical influence worldwide. Earthdawn is about the “Fourth World”, the previous magical epoch that came thousands of years prior to the Sixth (with the Fifth being the non-magical “present era” in-between)

4. Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - This is a series of children’s fantasy novels taking place in Neolithic Europe approximately 6000 years ago. It chronicles the adventures of an adolescent boy named Torak with his pet wolf cub Wolf and the girl Renn as they seek to defeat a group of evil mages called the Soul Eaters

Fantasy settings that take place on Earth in the distant (prehistoric) past