In my opinion, the single-linked-list data structure as a foundation of Lisp was selected not by accident. It is also most basic and natural representation of many natural concepts - a chain, a list. You could ask for the next element, and find out that there is no more. Simple and natural. Because of its simplicity the code is also simple.

Such kind of lists should be heterogeneous, because when all the elements are of the same type, it is more natural to represent it as an array - an ordered sequence. As far as I know, Python's lists actually are dynamic arrays.

The sequences of the elements of the same type (same storage size and encoding) with a marker at the end could be also viewed as a homogeneous lists. C strings processed as a list of characters is canonical example.

Now consider a UTF-8 encoding. It is a variable-length encoding. UTF-8 string is not an array, and because you cannot tell the boundaries between runes while reading, is not a list. But, nevertheless it could be considered and processed as a stream, until EOL marker is reached. This is why it was invented in Bell Labs to keep things as simple as possible.

Now, you see, the concept of a homogeneous list from math is not enough for CS, and sometimes it is much better to have it fuzzy. What is a list is a matter of a point of view.

I think I will keep my dealer.)