Citizenship depends on some nation existing. Otherwise, you’re just alive on the face of the earth, and the whole concept of “nation” is irrelevant.
So, given the rise of something called a nation, there is only the question of what is its governing authority and the power they exert on people.
Moses said to Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” Pharaoh didn’t dispute that by saying, “No they’re Egyptians.” Instead, his interest was in the slaves’ and their work quotas.
Citizenship as the word origin indicates existed before there was such an entity known as a nation. The association with cities was carried forward from the days when it signified membership in a class of people who who possessed certain rights and were subject to certain obligations as a consequence of being a member of that class of people associated with the city. This class of membership in a society of humans was a higher level of association superimposed on the previously existing family, band, clan, tribal, and confederation relationships. The word, “citizen”, is also being used improperly by confusing and/or conflating the various definitions for the word that belong to similar and different usages dependent upon the context of related terms. For example, Some persons born in the United States jurisdictions are not born with or as a person with the rights of a U.S. Citizen, yet they are to be considered as citizens of the United States in common parlance despite actually holding a status as nationals and not citizens of the United States. Negligent usage of the terminology in these debates serves to mislead and deceive readers who may be unfamiliar with and/or uninformed about the existence and consequences in these differences in word definitions and word usages.