No, because it&#x27;s possible to implement efficient hash tables with C&#x27;s primitives -- in fact that&#x27;s how hash tables in essentially ALL languages ARE implemented.<p>cons cells are not sufficient to implement hash tables.  Scheme needs arrays for that.  cons cells can be implemented efficiently using arrays, but the converse isn&#x27;t true, so arrays are more fundamental in some sense.<p>If you don&#x27;t care about algorithmic efficiency, then you could choose either cons cells or arrays as your primitive.  But obviously we do care, so arrays were the right choice.  IOW, C was the right choice, not Scheme.