Ethernet used to be a collision domain on coaxial cable, not a switched full-duplex medium on twisted pair. It changed piece by piece into something that's conceptually fairly different from what it was, especially when it ceased being a collision domain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_domain
> Early Ethernet variants (10BASE5, 10BASE2) were based on a shared wire and inherently half-duplex, representing a single, potentially large collision domain. Collision domains are also found in an Ethernet hub or repeater environment where each host segment connects to a hub, and all segments represent only one collision domain within one broadcast domain. Collision domains are also found in other shared medium networks, e. g. wireless networks such as Wi-Fi.
> Modern wired networks use a network switch to reduce or eliminate collisions. By connecting each device directly to a port on the switch, either each port on a switch becomes its own collision domain (in the case of half-duplex links), or the possibility of collisions is eliminated entirely in the case of full-duplex links. For Gigabit Ethernet and faster, no hubs or repeaters exist and all devices require full-duplex links.