the twelve city states

[Enkidoh]

My citation for that was the original version's manual, stating that Eorzea has seen host to countless citystates throughout Eorzea's history that take a member of the Twelve as their guardian:

The guardian gods and goddesses known as the Twelve watch over the city-states of Eorzea. These tiny nations carved out a history of blood and betrayal, forging and breaking alliances as each warred over territory and sought to impose uncompromising interpretations of their patron deities' will.

and

The vast realm of Eorzea, comprising the continent of Aldenard and it's outlying islands, has seen the rise of a civilization with peoples as diverse as its environs. Throughout it's history, the landscape has played home to a number of city-states-the tenuous relations between them fluctuating from friendly to hostile and back again.

The pantheon of the Twelve is followed devoutly by most, and doctrine holds that the past wars of the realm were the wars of the heavens, with the gods and goddesses choosing nations as their respective champions. Whether because of this celestial struggle or more worldy grievances, war spread throughout the realm, discouraging unity and peace.

Of course it is very vague but to me it wasn't specifically referring just to the current city-states but referring to nations that existed throughout it's history, meaning back to the very dawn of time. It also needs to be mentioned that in 1.0 the Allag themselves were very vague - all that was known about them was they were a name attached to a ruined cobblestone road in Thanalan and certain strange runestones that Rowena started dealing in. There was no mention whatsoever that they were an Empire or even when they flourished (I originally assumed they were a former ruler of Ul'dah at some time in the past). Only with ARR did the Allag get much further backstory added and clarification that they existed in the Third Astral Era (But that was pretty much symbolic of 1.0 in general - it's lore was so obscure and vague that it's what led to this very Lore forum section being added to the official FFXIV forums in the first place, such was the dedication of a number of 1.0 players to try and piece together the scattered threads and fragments of story that existed in the original game and make some semblence of it, that SE decided to aknowledge that with the official Lore forum. ).

Which leads to an important point - in the same way how in Shadowbringers it's mentioned that pre-Sundering/Terminus ruins like those of Amaurot found in The Tempest on the First would no longer exist on the Source due to constant Calamities all but erasing them from existence, as Umbral Calamities are such effective cultural reset buttons, it's little wonder little to no knowledge of anything pre-Sixth Umbral Era/late Fifth Astral Era civilization is known to exist either, save for the few remaining traces of Allag civilization, given they were virtually world-spanning and tended to make their structures and technology to last.

Apart from Skalla, which even then was already a forgotten ruin submerged under Loch Sied by the time Ala Mhigo ended up being built on top of it , and it's origins lost to time.