Metate
The metate is the slightly concave stone grinding slab at the heart of Mesoamerican cooking, used with a hand-held stone (mano) to grind nixtamalised maize into masa for tortillas, tamales and atole. Basalt and other volcanic stone were preferred, and the craft of shaping the slab, often on carved supports or a tripod base, goes back to the Preclassic era and continues in rural households today. The grinding of maize was never mere kitchen work: Mesoamerican myth held that the gods made people from maize dough, as the Popol Vuh recounts, so the metate transformed the sacred staple into human f