Mr Lankford vividly paints the picture in nearby Cape Clear, an inhabited island five miles north-east of Fastnet.

ECONOMIST: The Fastnet Lighthouse: Light on a lonely rock | The

It's the world's most remote inhabited island chain -- so precariously occupied that when a volcanic vent erupted in 1961, the whole population was evacuated to England.

CNN: World's 7 most dangerous and remote islands

According to recent researches, settlers coming from the mainland inhabited the island during the 8th millennium BC, developing the Aceramic Neolithic Civilisation, of which Choirokoitia is a fine example.

UNESCO: Choirokoitia

It has stayed open during even the tensest times between the two countries, including the North's surprise shelling last year of the inhabited South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.

WSJ: North Korea Opens Some Border Crossings

Nearly 2, 000 years ago, the indigenous Northwest people inhabited the remote Anthony Island as well as other spits of land that make up the Queen Charlotte Islands, sandwiched between the Hecate Strait and the Pacific. (In the Haida tongue, Anthony Island is known as SGang Gwaay and Queen Charlotte is Haida Gwaii.) The tribes' people, whose population likely peaked at more than 7, 000 archipelago-wide, were Neptunes of the sea.

UNESCO: Culture

Leonardo DiCaprio will play a young traveller who stumbles across a mysterious island in Thailand inhabited by a group of backpackers.

BBC: News | Entertainment | Trouble in paradise

In some neighborhoods boarded-up houses and empty lots island the remaining inhabited homes, which shrink behind spreading foliage lest they be next.

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One of many Easter Island mysteries is how this remote piece of land came to be inhabited.

CNN: 5 reasons to visit Easter Island

Heron Island, for example, is a speck of land on the Barrier Reef inhabited mostly by birds.

NPR: Pacific Island Cultures Brace for Climate Change