We would be talking about city-states, the precursors of nations, iirc. Good info, whiskey. Thanks.
Not necessariy. Nations became generally superimposed upon city states as the span of control of the sovereigns expanded across multiple city states to combined into one sovereign state. Before the advent of the cityies and city states, however, a tribal confederation of a nomad society could be said to have comprised a nation, if and when the society could claim some more or less well defined boundaries to their place of occupation.
In other wrods, the so-called legal definitions for the word, “nation”, are ill defined and comprise a multitude of alternative definitions dependent upon the context of time, place, and usage. Consequently, resort must be made to using additional words and concepts to reeine and narrow the intended meaning of the usage/s.