Uses for Spice Bowls

There are two main uses for the mortar and pestle design: culinary and medicinal. The oldest recorded use of the mortar and pestle seems to be the Mesoamerican use of the molcajete and tejolote, which appears to have been culinary. This was 5,000 years ago. The arrival of the suribachi and surikogi in Japan occurred 1,000 years ago and was both medicinal and culinary. The European use of the mortar and pestle goes back about 500 years and was initially medicinal, but later culinary.