Erlang isn't exactly about parallelism as much as concurrency. There is a different to both; concurrency is about running independent units of code (at the same time or not) while parallelism has the explicit requirement of things running at the same time.
Erlang can be concurrent on a single core, but things can hardly be truly parallel that way.
Erlang's parallelism will thus be coming from being able to parallelize concurrent units, something that usually takes place at a higher level than function application for lists and whatnot (although you can use rpc:pmap for your map example). They're not exactly the same.
Erlang's concurrency is organisational and explicit; the objective is to delimit subcomponents of a system in well established and isolated units, which can then communicate through message passing. The main objective is not to get things to run faster, but to help manage complexity in large systems.
Erlang can be concurrent on a single core, but things can hardly be truly parallel that way.
Erlang's parallelism will thus be coming from being able to parallelize concurrent units, something that usually takes place at a higher level than function application for lists and whatnot (although you can use rpc:pmap for your map example). They're not exactly the same.
Erlang's concurrency is organisational and explicit; the objective is to delimit subcomponents of a system in well established and isolated units, which can then communicate through message passing. The main objective is not to get things to run faster, but to help manage complexity in large systems.