Karachop pattern has most probable pre-Islamic totemic sources which it shares with the Turkoman göl. Over the period from which examples are available, the design of the Karachop rugs basically remained, stable geometric designs, possibly because it was ancient adaptation of Central Asian totemic themes. Many symmetrical design elements to be pointed on the north/south or vertical axis and blunted on the east/west or horizontal axis can be found commonly in rugs of Turkic speaking people: Turkmen, Shahsavan, Azebaijani, Turkish etc.  A 'proto-Karachop' (McMullan, plate 98) from western Turkey shows four pairs of red stylized animals in the central octagonal medallion, surrounded by four minor medallions edged with typical Turkoman-style kotshak forms. Most probably it had a south Caucasian contemporary, but no example is known. The earliest Karachops, like other early Kazaks, are finely knotted and not very large. They have either a red or green field, and a dark purple color is almost always present.

Subsidiary figures which are found at each end, in the “2-1-2” format, can also let us to trace the lineage of the Karachops back to the Holbein carpets and Ushaks. Following is an image of a 16th Century Holbein Type IV rug from the Museum of Islamic and Turkish Arts in Istanbul illustrating this relationship:

Information about the Karachop village: Karachöp is the name of a district with eight villages in Kakheti province, Georgia. The name of these villages are Yor-Mughanli, Tüller, Lambali, Kesheli, Düzeyremi, Qarabaghli, Qazylar and Baldo. These villages are inhabited by Karapapakh Turks. This is the ethnic group who is responsible for the weaving of the historical Karachop rugs. The names of these villages are taken from the sub-groups of the Karapapakh tribe.

Karachop village

Note: KARAPAPAKH (Turkish, "black hat"), a Turkic people whose language belongs to the western Oghuz division. They are of mixed Kypchak and Oghuz origin.