> In non lisp languages, the mutable array often came without map / filter

What languages do you know that have map and filter for lists, but not for arrays? Lisp has them for both, C++ has them for both, Java has them for both; Java didn't used to have lambdas or map, but it had standard lists long before it got either of them. Several decades before Java existed, Lisp had mutable arrays with map and filter. Supporting higher order functions has nothing at all to do with arrays vs lists.

> didn't have lambdas so you end up writing imperative loops

Lisp does have lambdas and imperative loops are still extremely common in Lisp code.

I'm not criticizing lisp at all here. And Java had lists but no functional API on top of it. Processing ArrayLists is extremely different from (mapcar #'f '(....)), in idiom, paradigm. You can, but you'll have to do anonymous inner classes gymnastics and you'll end up writing loops before you know it. And my point is: it sucks.

> Java had lists but no functional API on top of it. Processing ArrayLists is extremely different from (mapcar #'f '(....))

My point was that the functional API is the key difference, not arrays vs lists. Java in 2000 had lists and no functional API, whereas Lisp in 1970 had mutable arrays with a functional API available for use on them. Mapping over a list in Lisp looks like `(map 'list #'f '(...))` (The first argument is the return type; MAPCAR is just a list-specific version of MAP), mapping over a Java-style array looks like `(map 'list #'f #(...))`. Lists vs arrays makes no real difference (if they were in variables instead of literals, you couldn't even tell if it were an array or a list by looking at that call). Java in 2017 similarly has a functional API that can be used on lists or (much more commonly) on mutable arrays.