Lisp did not 'invent' Lambda functions, they were invented by Alonzo Church in the 1930s. And even that was only a minor syntactical innovation.

Okay, fine. Lisp was the first programming language with them, and lisp-like programming languages are the only ones still in widespread use that has have had them from the beginning...as opposed to every other random language that eventually figures out that what lisp has is a good idea, and then has to back-patch it into their syntax. I don't get why, since Lisp just comes back again and again and again, people don't just give up and standardize on it, and smooth out the blemishes, strengthen the libraries, and all this language squabbling would just end.