This beautiful metate is truly an amazing sculpture; especially when one considers it was carved with only stone and wooden tools. It is a tour de force of balance and harmony, with an organic quality, like a miraculous tropical flower rising from the earth in full bloom. The three jaguar heads are significant, for the jaguar and monkey clans were the only two from which chiefs, or caciques, could be chosen. Though it may have had a functional purpose for grinding corn, its elaborate nature suggests it was designed for special circumstances in preparing food for ritual ceremonies. From the mouth of the jaguars hang slim 'tendrils' or tongues flowing down to attach onto the base. The cutout pedestal forms a single unit with the metate plate, gracefully curved like petals. If this metate was in fact made for 'use' in the afterlife, it has a suitable ethereal quality in seeming delicate and yet massive at the same time. Truly it is fit for royalty in this world or the next.