The term for what you're describing is a stateless nation; the term coming from Jacques Lereuz's book about Scotland. Though it was originally about the Scottish, the term was quickly adopted by people with far less of a state.

Groups frequently identified with the term, such as your own, include the Kurds, Catalans (sometimes), Sindhs, and Tauregs, to name a few of the most prominent.

So in other words, yes. By that definition, there are many nations--shared cultural and ancestral bodies of people--that lack states; in fact, you could argue very few nations possess independent states.

But I think you're asking about a state, in addition to a nation. The term for that is the convenient Nation-State; these are the corporate legal entities that are the primary actors on the globe today. And as it stands, according to the general consensus of political science, a state requires territory. This need not be independent--autonomous ethnic enclaves are found around the world, and these are generally considered states.

Today, international law as recognized by the UN considers territory a requirement for statehood.

But you asked about history: Historically, the answer is a little smudgy, and it cuts into multiple fields. It even gets a little philosophical: When can we speak about 'nations?' Because depending on how you define some of these nebulous terms, the answers can vary widely.

For example, not every culture has placed a value, historically, on land ownership, in the legal sense. They might claim hunting rights or have a vague sphere of influence they defend, but for example, Comancheria, the Comanche territories prior to the 1860s or so, had no formal boundaries; it was a largely informal zone that marked where the Comache tribes generally were.

Of course, I'm ignoring the most obvious answer, which are the Jewish people, post diaspora. Despite not possessing a state for most of the last two thousand years, they maintained strong cultural cohesion across dozens of kingdoms and operated networks of mutual aid and commerce that spanned the length of the old world, the most famous being the Radhanites who operated much of the Silk Road during the early middle ages.

What is a nation, to you? Google's definition is quite vague, as the term is more personal than people generally admit. Could the Circassian people organize some kind of transnational society? Of course! I'd expect there is one. Could that society have some kind of political clout? Possibly, though I'd suspect only in places where they could flex the power of their members: Again, think of the Zionist movement in the 20th century. Could they form an administrative unit, though? Without land, I'm not sure how that would work.